Cocotte on the Street, 1915

About the Work

In front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, a cocotte with an umbrella comes straight towards the viewer as in a film close-up. In its technical and compositional interlocking of form and colour, this colour woodcut from two blocks anticipates the woodcut series on “Peter Schlemihl” (inv. no. 65603-65610). The three variations of the Städel Museum bear witness to Kirchner’s experimental handling of the printing technique. Whereas the print made from the block with the fundamental elements of the drawing (the so-called drawing block) can stand its ground as a composition in its own right (inv. no. SG 4372), the example solely in black from the block actually cut for the coloured areas (the colour block) has the appearance of a photo negative (inv. no. SG 4373). In the third example (inv. no. 65598), the artist first printed the drawing block in black, and then, over it, pale impressions of the colour block and the drawing block inked partially in monotype manner.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.