Der Winter (The Winter) (headpiece, page 37) 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
2012.92.41.30
Art Historical Context
**Der Winter (The Winter)**, a striking woodcut headpiece by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner on page 37 of *Georg Heym: Um Vitae* (1924), invites visitors into raw emotional landscape of German Expressionism Kirchner, a founding member of the revolutionary Die Brücke group, created this as part of a deluxe bound volume containing 50cuts—including cover, front, and back endpapers—on fine wove paper. The book illustrates poems by Georg Heym, the visionary Expressionist poet who tragically drowned in 1912 at age 24. Produced over a decade later, Kirchner's prints vividly interpret Heym's themes of life's s...
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...