Three at the Table, 1914

About the Work

Schmidt-Rottluff presumably embarked on his investigation of African forms in 1909. He began amassing an extensive collection of non-European works in 1913; he was the only Brücke artist to do so. In 1921, his friend the art historian Wilhelm Niemeyer (1874–1960) cited the division of the face into basic geometric forms as a salient characteristic of African masks. From 1914 onward, this aesthetic also defines Schmidt-Rottluff’s increasingly cubist faces that thus exchange the individual for the universal.

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.