Die Nebelstädte (The Misty Cities) (headpiece, page 43) 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
2012.92.41.36
Art Historical Context
**Die Nebelstädte (The Misty Cities)**, a striking woodcut headpiece by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner on page43 of *Georg Heym: Um Vitae* (The Shadow of Life), captures haunting essence of early 20th-century Expression. Created in 1924, this piece is part of a luxurious bound volume containing 50 woodcuts—including the cover, frontispiece, and endpapers— on fine wove paper. Kirchner, a founding member of revolutionary Die Brücke group, channeled the turbulent spirit of post-World War I Germany into his work, illustrating the visionary poetry of Georg Heym, an Expressionist poet who tragically drowned ...
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...