Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Expressionism
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff is an important representative of German Expressionism. He was born in Chemnitz (Rottluff) and is today considered the most internationally important artist of the city. He founded the artist group Brücke in Dresden in 1905, together with his friends Fritz Bleyl, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel. Kirchner and Heckel, his school friend, also grew up in Chemnitz, so Chemnitz is considered as a kind of nucleus of the Brücke. Schmidt-Rottluff, as an artist autodidact, advocated a free, non-academic art. This should bring the connection of life, perception and creation to direct expression.
The Chemnitz Art Collections house one of the largest collections of his paintings and graphic works. Already in the early 1920s, the museum and its director Friedrich Schreiber-Weigand maintained a close and continuous relationship with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. This selection shows important paintings and documents by the artist from all periods of his work, representative pieces by the Brücke artists and modern artists from the collection. On display for the first time is the exquisite wooden sculpture Standing woman (1920) by Erich Heckel, which was acquired for the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in 2023.
