Der Garten (The Garden) (headpiece, page 58) from Georg Heym: Umbra Vitae (Georg Heym: The Shadow of Life)
Medium
woodcut from a bound volume with 50 woodcuts (including cover and front and back endpapers) on wove paper
Dimensions
book: 23.8 × 16.5 × 1.2 cm (9 3/8 × 6 1/2 × 1/2 in.)
Classification
Volume
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
Accession Number
2012.92.41.45
Art Historical Context
**Der Garten (The Garden)**, a striking woodcut headpiece on page 58, comes from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's masterful 1924 illustrated edition of Georg Heym *Umbra Vitae (The Shadow of Life)*. Kirchner, a pioneering German Expression and co-founder of the Brücke group, produced this bound volume containing 50 woodcuts—including the cover and endpapers—to accompany Heym's dark, visionary poetry. Created on wove paper and measuring just 23.8 × 16.5 × 1.2 cm, the intimate book format invites close contemplation of its shadowy themes, evoking gardens as enigmatic, otherworldly spaces amid Expressioni...
About the Artist
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner · 1880–1938
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born on May 6, 1880, in Aschaffenburg, Germany, to parents Ernst and Maria Kirchner, part of a family of Prussian descent that frequently relocated due to his father's career as a chemical technician. After early schooling in various towns, he studied architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Dresden from 1901 to 1905, taking courses i...