Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl

orig. Karl Schmidt

(born Dec. 1, 1884, Rottluff, Ger.—died Aug. 9, 1976, West Berlin, W.Ger.) German painter and printmaker. As an architecture student in Dresden, he helped form Die Br in 1905. He soon realized the expressive potential of flat, patterned design; his mature style, seen in Self-Portrait with Monocle (1910), is characterized by boldly dissonant colours and jagged forms. After 1911, when he moved to Berlin, his paintings and woodcuts showed an interest in Cubism and African sculpture. Though his works had become more conventional by the 1930s, the Nazis officially declared them “degenerate.” After World War II he taught art and resumed painting, but his work never regained its former power.

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