DRESDEN.- The acquisition of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street Picture in front of the Hair Salon fills a long-standing gap in the Albertinum’s collection. With this street scene, a work returns permanently to Dresden which until 1933 had occupied a central position in the modern art collection of the Dresdner Galerie. The Director of the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Hans Posse, had selected the work after dogged negotiations with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It was acquired by the city of Dresden so that the city could “participate in the completion of the Gemäldegalerie”. Until 1933, Kirchner’s figure painting was exhibited on loan in the Semper building adjacent the Zwinger, and was then given back to the city of Dresden. In 1933 it was shown in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in the atrium of the Neues Rathaus, was confiscated in 1937 as “degenerate”, and sold in 1939/40 in the course of its so-called disposal.

In the future, Kirchner’s luminous street scene will form a highlight of the Albertinum’s Expressionism collection. (Previously, the only painting confiscated as “degenerate” that the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden was able to reacquire was a work by Erich Heckel.)

This painting deals with the everyday urban experience and alienation of the inhabitants of the modern metropolis, as Kirchner experienced it. The scene, composed in orange and green contrasts, reflects the striking impressions that Kirchner – after nine years residing and convalescing in the seclusion of the Swiss mountains – gathered during his travels through Germany in 1925/26. Travelling through Frankfurt, Chemnitz, Dresden and Berlin, he made a great many sketches. Upon his return to Davos, he painted a series of meticulously constructed paintings from memory, which were deliberately simplified and displayed a marked flatness of form. The work that has now been acquired for Dresden is regarded as Kirchner’s best work from this series: for this scene, the artist managed to compose the image in a particularly compelling fashion. Bathed in lurid light, a nightwalker steps towards a brightly-lit shop window, ringed by impassive, harried passers-by. With this dynamic visual concept and the suggestive juxtaposition of men and women, Kirchner’s image echoes his series of street scenes created in 1913/14 in Berlin, which today are amongst the incunabula of modernism in Germany.

Hartwig Fischer, Director-General of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: “Unlike in the West German art centres, after 1949, the museums in East Germany were only able to make up for the losses incurred through the National Socialists’ 1937 confiscations of so-called ‘degenerate art’ in a somewhat piecemeal fashion, since they were largely shut out of the international art market.

For the Dresdner Sammlung, this acquisition represents a decisive addition, and an enormous increase in the quality of our Kirchner holdings. A work by Kirchner from the 1920s had been missing up till now. We are very grateful to all the sponsors who have made this important acquisition possible.”

Hilke Wagner, Director of the Albertinum: “For Dresden, the acquisition of Kirchner’s work has a special significance, it was here that Die Brücke artist group was founded in 1905, making the city the birthplace of German Expressionism.”