Die Seefahrer (The Seafarer) (headpiece, page 10) 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
2012.92.41.9
Art Historical Context
**Die Seefahrer (The Seafarer)**, a striking woodcut headpiece on page 10 of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's *Umbra Vitae (Georg Heym: The Shadow of Life)*, captures the raw intensity of early 20th-century Expressionism. Created in 1924, this image is part of a lavish bound volume containing 50 woodcuts—including the cover, front, and back endpapers—printed on fine wove paper. Kirchner, a founding member of the Die Brücke group, illustrated the haunting poems of Georg Heym, a visionary German Expressionist poet who died young in 1912. The book (measuring 23.8 × 16.5 × 1.2 cm) reflects Kirchner's post-...
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...