Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Friends

Ernst Kirchner, seminal expressionist painter and founding member of the influential artists’ collective Die Brücke, came to the Swiss mountains during World War I to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his Friends is the first book to explore how Kirchner became a role model, teacher, and mentor for younger artists during his time in Davos.

The momentous artistic exchange between Kirchner and his young admirers—whose ranks included the German Philipp Bauknecht, the Dutch Jan Wiegers, and the members of the Swiss Gruppe Rot-Blau—established a dialogue that had a formative influence on the direction of European art in the twentieth century. This matchless volume provides a record of the extraordinary bond that developed between a legendary—yet ailing—artist and the up-and-coming Gruppe Rot-Blaue in Switzerland.