Self-Portrait with Dancing Death, 1917 – 1918

About the Work

As in a metamorphosis, the figure of a dancing Death seems to rise up out of the portrait of the artist with a hunchback. During the phase when Kirchner suffered from paralysis of the hands, he was unable to break areas of any appreciable size out of wooden blocks. The resistance offered by the material, however, enabled him to cut lines into the surface with a V-parting tool as steadily as with a drawing utensil. This print is accordingly defined for the most part by white (non-printing) lines.

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.