Head of a Sick Man (Self-Portrait), 1918

About the Work

This intense self-portrait of Kirchner shows him in a severely emaciated state. The depiction of his hands – temporarily paralyzed as a result of medication abuse – has a symbolic quality. In 1915, just months after entering military service, the artist had suffered a mental and physical breakdown. There followed a series of stays in sanatoria, of which the last was in Kreuzlingen on Lake Constance. The sensitive, contrary strokes defining the face and hands translate Kirchner’s psychological tension into the woodcut medium in striking 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.