Die Seefahrer (The Seafarer) (in-text plate) from mock-up of Georg Heym: Umbra Vitae (Georg Heym: Shadow of Life)
1912/1922
Medium
woodcut from a bound volume with 51 woodcuts (including cover and front and back endpapers) on wove paper
Dimensions
book: 21.7 × 14.5 × 1.3 cm (8 9/16 × 5 11/16 × 1/2 in.)
Classification
Volume
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
Accession Number
2012.92.40.8
Art Historical Context
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a founding member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke, *Die Seefahrer (The Seafarer)* in 1912 as part of a ambitious series of 51 woodcuts illustrating Georg Heym's visionary poetry collection *Umbrae (Shadow of Life)*. Heym, a fellow Expressionist poet who tragically died young in 1912, explored themes of urban alienation, mortality, and primal forces—themes that resonated deeply with Kirchner's own turbulent worldview amid the pre-World War I era. This in-text plate, bound into a compact mock-up volume in 1922 on wove paper (measuring just 21.7 × 14.5 × 1.3 cm...
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...