Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig

(born May 6, 1880, Aschaffenberg, Bavaria—died June 15, 1938, near Davos, Switz.) German painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He was among the founders of the Expressionist group Die Br. Kirchner's highly personal style, influenced by Albrecht D, Edvard Munch, and African and Polynesian art, was noted for its psychological tension and eroticism. He used simple, powerfully drawn forms and often garish colours to create intense, sometimes threatening works, such as his two versions of Street, Berlin (1907, 1913). Highly strung and often depressed, he took his own life when the Nazis declared his work “degenerate.”

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