Nude Girl at her Toilette
Medium
lithograph on beige wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 67.2 × 54.1 cm (26 7/16 × 21 5/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
Accession Number
2012.92.736
Art Historical Context
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's *Nude Girl at her Toilette (1912) captures the raw emotional intensity of German Expressionism. As a founding member of Die Brücke (The Bridge), a radical group formed in Dresden in 1905, Kirchner rejected academic traditions in favor of bold, distorted forms and vivid psychological expression. This lithograph, printed on beige wove paper, depicts an intimate domestic scene, reflecting the artist's fascination with urban modernity and the female nude during his Berlin period, amid the pre-World War I cultural ferment. The medium of lithography allowed Kirchner to achie...
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...