Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

In 1905 in Dresden, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff became a founding member of a group of German Expressionist artists who called themselves Die Brücke (The Bridge). Brücke style was deliberately unsophisticated with large areas of flat, unbroken color, simplified geometric shapes, and pure, glowing unmixed hues.


After the dissolution of the group in 1913, Schmidt-Rottluff continued to pursue some of its basic aims, such as the revelation of psychic intensity through the formal harmony of lines, shapes, lights and darks, using the medium of woodcut for its inherent expressive capacities. In his 1914 composition Three People at the Table, he emphasized spiritual meaning over scientific representation by exaggerating the figures’ heads (the site of the psyche). Now at the height of his engagement with the woodcut and influenced by Cubism, Schmidt-Rottluff began to supplement his Expressionist style with more reductive, geometric forms. This development marked a shift for the artist away from landscapes and nudes to interiors and clothed figures. While serving with the German military in Lithuania, Schmidt-Rottluff continued to produce woodcuts and took up overtly Christian subject matter as a way of coming to terms with his war experiences.