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Erich Heckel
Döbein, 1883-Radolfzell, 1970
Heckel was one of the founder members in Dresden of the Expressionist group known as Die Brücke (The Bridge) as well as one of its most active members. Heckel studied painted and drawing in Chemnitz, where he met Schmidt-Rottluff. In 1904 he moved to Dresden to study architecture in the Technical School where he was a fellow student of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl. Together they abandoned their technical studies in favour of painting and in June 1905 founded Die Brücke, of which Heckel was the core member and organiser. In the summer of 1907 he and Schmidt-Rottluff went for the first time to Dangast on the North Sea where his style fully developed. In spring 1909 Heckel travelled to Italy, spending the summer with Kirchner on the Moritzburg lakes near Dresden. Like the rest of the group Heckel moved to Berlin in 1911 where shortly afterwards Die Brücke broke up. During World War I he was a volunteer in a medical unit in Belgium and later joined the Novembergruppe. With the arrival of the Nazi regime Heckel's works were confiscated and exhibited in the notorious exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). From 1949 to 1955 he was a teacher at the Fine Arts Academy in Karlsruhe, spending the last years of his life in retirement in Hemmenhofen near Lake Constanz, where he died.
Heckel's early Expressionist style fell within the parameters of the Die Brücke movement and was always focused on landscape, with or without figures. He also made a large number of woodcuts of great formal simplicity. In the 1920s his style came closer to that of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). In the last years of his life he returned to a sort of Expressionism, although one moderated by a more traditional approach.
Henze, A.: Erich Heckel, Leben und Werk. Stuttgart-Zurich, 1983.
Vergo, P.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Twentieth Century German Painting. London, 1992.
Vogt, P.: Erich Heckel. Recklinghausen, 1965.
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