Two Girls in a Garden

Karl Schmidt-RottluffWW-1914-132967

1914·Oil on canvas·100.3 × 86.4 cm (39 1/2 × 34 in.)

<p>Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a founding member of Brücke (Bridge). Formed in 1905 in Dresden, the group sought to forge an art that would be a bridge to Germany’s great artistic past. Brücke renounced academic painting and promoted a more intuitive approach that drew on non-Western and outsider sources. The intentionally rough and angular style of <em>Two Girls in a Garden</em> demonstrates Schmidt-Rottluff’s interest in African sculpture, which he studied in the Dresden Ethnographic Museum. To combat the devolution of modern society, the members of Brücke praised nature and frequently communed together in the countryside. Though by 1914 Schmidt-Rottluff had moved to Berlin, nature would remain an important source of inspiration in his art.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1914
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 100.3 × 86.4 cm (39 1/2 × 34 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Artist

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Printmaking

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German Expressionist painter and printmaker whose bold, angular woodcuts and landscapes employed vivid, non-naturalistic color and emotionally charged brushwork. A founding member of Die Brücke in Dresden, he developed a distinctive approach to form that prioritized psychological intensity over representational accuracy.

Berlin, Germany

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