Drei Badende an Steinen, Fehmarn, 1913

About the Work

During his time in Berlin, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner spent some summer months on Fehmarn. Because of its stony beach, the remote south-east coast of the Baltic island was rarely visited by other holidaymakers and thus provided the artist with perfect peace and privacy outdoors for his nude drawings. In the numerous works he produced there, Kirchner frequently portrayed Fehmarn as a South Sea paradise. The figures in this lithograph are defined primarily by masterfully executed sweeping lines in a natural setting which has been is reduced to a few symbols. Kirchner probably translated his drawings into prints in his Berlin studio as there was no lithographic stone available on Fehmarn. He left parts of the paper unprinted, creating the impression of a coloured drawing rather than a lithograph.

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.