Georg Heym: Umbra Vitae (Georg Heym: The Shadow of Life)
Medium
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
2012.92.41.1-50
Art Historical Context
**Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's *Georg Heym: Um Vitae (The Shadow of Life)*1924)** is a bound volume featuring 50 woodcuts printed on wove paper, the cover and endpapers. Measuring a compact 23.8 × 16.5 × 1.2 cm, this artist's book serves as a visual homage to the Expressionist poet Georg Heym whose dark, visionary verses explore themes of mortality and urban alienation. Kirchner, a founding member of the revolutionary Die Brücke group, these illustrations over a decade after Heym's tragic death in 1912, capturing the poet's haunting imagery through bold, angular forms. As a master of the woodcut m...
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...