Three People at the Table (Drei am Tisch)

Produced in late 1914, Three People at the Table exemplifies profound changes in Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s art after the outbreak of World War I (1914–18) yet also demonstrates the characteristic controlled and deliberately unsophisticated style associated with the German Expressionist artistic association Die Brücke (The Bridge) that the artist cofounded a decade earlier. In the work, three women sit around a bare table with the prominent exception of a single, stemmed glass, or chalice. The simplified, angular styling of both the figural forms and the setting, the intimate proximity of the women, the extreme upward tilt of the table, and the ambiguity of the light source convey a tense monumentality, and together they lend a sense of ritual to the image. Yet while the print has a compositional and thematic arrangement with obvious associations to Christian religious imagery—among them the Last Supper, the Supper at Emmaus, the Trinity, images of the enthroned Virgin Mary in sacred conversation with saints, and the celebration of the Catholic Mass—the true meaning of the scene is unclear.

Following the war, woodcuts became increasingly popular in Germany. Widely promoted as a national art form with roots in late medieval German religious imagery, the medium was imbued by artists, collectors, and critics around 1920 with a mystical, regenerative aura. For them, the woodcut also held significance in its connection to artists Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and other German Renaissance print masters.