Heads I, 1911

About the Work

In 1911, Schmidt-Rottluff cut two monumental heads with somewhat angular contours in wood. Narrow white lines form clear boundaries between the faces and the dark sections of the background and the hair. The grain of the spruce block shows clearly in the areas printed in black. On the forehead of the woman on the left we even see the curved form of a knothole. These incidentals lend a lively structure to the large, reductive zones: the wood speaks along with the ink.

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.