Fränzi in front of a Carved Chair, ca. 1910

About the Work

Kirchner used black chalk to lay out the contours of Fränzi’s body in simple, concise lines. The depiction is slightly distorted and – lacking internal detail or shading that could indicate volume – planar in character. The artist captured the girl with a slightly lowered gaze, sitting on a colourfully painted wooden bench. He had carved the seat himself, cutting the relief of a standing nude into its high back. In both colour scheme and formal conception, this relief has a more three-dimensional appearance than Fränzi herself – human being and artwork thus enter into suspenseful dialogue.

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.