After Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff founded the artist group “Brücke” in Dresden in 1905, graphic art quickly became one of the artists’ central means of expression and a defining force of German Expressionism. It opened new opportunities to explore form and content while also increasing the circulation of their works. Using various techniques from woodcuts and etchings to lithographs, they created expressive, dynamic compositions that were a striking reflection of the artists' keen interest in motion, gesture, and rhythm. The artists particularly appreciated the lithography technique, which preserved the spontaneity of drawing and allowed them to capture scenes on the fly. This was particularly appealing to Kirchner, who was a brilliant draftsman. He often printed his lithographs himself, without the assistance of professional printers, as is the case with the work offered here. This resulted in small editions unique for their color nuances and documents Kirchner's experimental approach to the medium.




The Dancing Couple at the Central Theater
Kirchner's fascinating lithograph “Russisches Tänzerpaar” (Russian Dancing Couple) from 1909 vividly illustrates his deep interest in dance and movement. The motif is based on a performance that Kirchner saw at the Central Theater on Waisenhausstraße in Dresden in September of that year. This color lithograph, of which only a few hand-printed copies are known to exist, depicts an incredibly energetic dance scene starring Russian prima ballerina Olga Preobrajensky and ballet master Georges Kiatschk from the St. Petersburg Court Theater, which captures the fluid elegance of their movements. The two dancers appear to have been captured here during a rehearsal. They reappear in Kirchner's oil painting “Russisches Tanzpaar” from 1909 (Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Mit einem kritischen Katalog sämtlicher Gemälde, Munich 1968, no. 75), and he sent a sketch on a postcard to Erich Heckel with the remark: “Russian dancer at the Central quite nice. Best regards, Ernst" (Annemarie Dube-Heynig, E. L. Kirchner. Postkarten und Briefe an Erich Heckel, Cologne 1984, no. 6).





From movement to line and color
Kirchner and the other “Brücke” artists drew inspiration from a variety of performing arts, including ballet, variety shows, and circus acts. Venues like the Central Theater and the traveling Sarrasani Circus provided abundant inspiration for their artistic work. The artists observed the performances with great fascination and translated the gestures, costumes, and energetic performances of the dancers and artists into expressive compositions that made the movement and expression tangible. In the present work, Kirchner reduced his graphic style to its essentials.
The lines summarize the complex sequences of movements performed by the dancers, while contrasting color fields become vivid, expressive elements of an intense vitality, as Kirchner himself emphasizes: "Observing movement gives me an intense feeling of vitality, which is the origin of the artwork. A body in motion reveals many individual views, which merge within me into an overall form —the inner image. [...] My pictures are parables, not illustrations." (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1930, quoted from: Exhibition catalog Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880–1938, Berlin 1980, p. 87) [KA]