Dodo in the Studio

The Dresden and Berlin studios of members of The Bridge (Die Brücke) group of Expressionists—much like the lakeside and coastal bathing sites they frequented—were "alternative" locations on the fringes of society, where the hard and fast boundaries that separated art and life could be dissolved in a youthful spirit unfettered by contemporary German social customs and strictures.

Studio decorations and props were overtly non-European in subject and style as E.L. Kirchner and Erich Heckel, for example, turned for inspiration to the arts and crafts of traditional African, Asian, and South Sea cultures. They featured genuine artifacts amongst their own painted curtains and carved furniture and objects inspired by these non-Western pieces. In this Dresden-period pastel, for example, Kirchner set his fashionably dressed companion at the time and frequent model, Doris "Dodo" Grosse, against the backdrop of an African carving—possibly genuine or carved by Kirchner himself—and Oceanic-inspired painted curtains.