Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

While spending his first winter in Frauenkirch above Davos, Kirchner in December 1918 received a commission from the Vereinigung für Neue Kunst in Frankfurt to print a woodcut. The subject of this print, meant as an annual edition ('Jahresgabe') for the members of the arts club, was to be a portrait of the Frankfurt art dealer Ludwig Schames, who had exhibited Kirchner's work for the first time in 1916.

Although Kirchner's state of health had somewhat improved in the mountains, he was still suffering from frayed nerves and bouts of depression and paralysis; it is hence somewhat surprising that Kirchner accepted the commission. It is unclear from his correspondence whether the edition was to be 120, 150 or even 180 - in any case it was very unlike Kirchner, who rarely printed more than a dozen impressions of each subject, to produce so large an edition. As an added difficulty, Kirchner did not have a printing press at the time and had to print each impression by rubbing it by hand.

The woodcut shows Ludwig Schames almost frontally as a close-up of his face and large, flowing beard. In the undefined background, Kirchner placed a female figure, certainly one of Kirchner's own carved wood sculptures, as an attribute of the art dealer Schames. Kirchner had not seen him for over two years and must have created the portrait either from memory or with the help of a now lost photograph. Kopf Ludwig Schames, with its jagged edges, extreme vertical format, and dense, rhythmic contrasts of black and white, became one of his most dramatic and monumental woodcut portraits.

We are grateful to Professor Dr. Günther Gercken, Lütjensee, Germany, for his assistence in cataloguing this lot. Professor Gercken is currently preparing the new catalogue raisonné of prints by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.