(Aschaffenburg 1880–1938 Frauenkirch near Davos)
“Hirt u Kalb”- shepherd with cow at the Stafelalp, 1918, watercolour, blue chalk on brownish paper, inscribed by another hand “Hirt u Kalb”, 44.5 x 59.5 cm - on the reverse a standing nude, black chalk on paper, 1914, with the stamp of the estate, numbered A Da/Bl 11 with ink and K3803 and C3502 with pencil, framed

The work is registered in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive Wichtrach/Bern.

Provenance:
The Estate of the artist 1938-1980
Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern (1980)
Galerie Schwarzer, Düsseldorf (2000) - acquired there by the previous owner
Private Collection, Germany

Exhibited:
Campione d’Italia, Roman Norbert Ketterer & Galerie Henze, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Zum 100. Geburtstag”, 1980
Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Zum 120. Geburtstag”, 2000
Galerie Schwarzer Düsseldorf, Art Cologne 2000

“Kirchner’s drawings are perhaps the purest and most beautiful of his works.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner under the pseudonym Louis de Marsalle, Zeichnungen E. L. Kirchner in: Genius II,

Munich 1920, pp. 216-224

The drawings of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are the real focal point of his creative work, from which his painting and graphic prints most certainly derive. “Kirchner’s drawings are perhaps the purest and most beautiful of his works. They are unconscious and unintentional, a mirror of the sensitivities of a human being of our time. Additionally, they contain the stylistic language of his graphic works and his paintings, the other part of his creative output, in which a conscious will is active. The living force of this will, however, comes about through the drawing.” (1)
In his sketchbook, which Kirchner carried with him at all times, he preserved his impressions, thoughts in the studio, characters on the street, or scenes from nature. “I must draw to the point of distraction, only draw, then, after a while, pick out only the cream of the crop. The technique is too beautiful.” (2)
With the help of drawing, Kirchner can immediately preserve and spontaneously capture the optical impression. He fulfilled his wish for constant transformation and heightened subjectivity in art with a quick grasp of forms and a new conception of subject matter. His art reached its first pinnacle in the years 1913-14: “One can observe a tremendous intensification, a concentration on very specific shaping and colour, unique to myself.” He reduces objective seeing and increases his subjective perception, the consequence of which is that the external world, overflowing with stimuli, becomes his own projection of the internal world. It is apparent in the radicalism of the form and in the intensification of expression, the abbreviated forms appear eruptive and explosive, and what is depicted is a construct derived from reality – Kirchner himself uses the concept of the hieroglyph in connection with his drawings. On a double folio from 1914, showing a female nude standing in front of a figure, and in the “Hirten auf der Stafelalp” (Shepherds on the Stafelalp), from 1918, Kirchner’s two lifeworlds come together – the metropolis and nature.
His longstanding habit of putting everything on paper through drawing made him capable of reproducing everything, in forms and lines, that he could perceive both physically and spiritually. In his works, such as with the posterior nude from 1914, Kirchner fills out the whole folio, yet it is not merely the visible lines and forms that constitute the image, but also the unmarked parts that contribute to the understanding of the work. “As early as in 1914, we encounter, in Kirchner’s graphic art, faces in which en face the nose is registered in profile, likewise the eye, in order to capture the portrait more precisely in this manner, and the viewer only notices it when his attention is drawn to it, so completely is the harmony of lines preserved. An artist can risk such forms only when he is a complete master of the forms of nature.” (3)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner captured the scene in “Hirte und Kalb” (Shepherd and Calf) on the Stafelalp above Davos. He ended up there in 1917, with weakened nerves and a provisional discharge from the German Army. Kirchner spent the following summers high up on the alp and returned to the valley in winter, in order to capture on canvas in his studio what he had seen and experienced. Kirchner reproduced in the most diverse moods the arrival of the animals in the morning and the return of man and cattle in the evening. For him it was the peace and harmony with nature which gave him strength as well as new inspiration. He renders the mountain world and depicts the harmony of man, beast, and nature with only a few lines, which, however, fill the folio. Using watercolour of diverse nuances and chromatic intensities, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner consciously places emphases that seem to converge in the focus on the calf in the foreground, rendered in yellow, whose lines are completely in thrall to Expressionism and appear to be a homage to the animals of Franz Marc.

(1) Ibid.
(2) Lothar Grisebach, E. L. Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch,entry of 4 August 1919, Cologne 1968, p. 54
(3) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s preface to the catalogue: Ausstellung der Graphik von E. L. Kirchner, Galerie Arkarius, Zurich 1927