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Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Karl Schmidt)
Rottluff, 1884-Berlin, 1976
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was one of the founders of the Die Brücke group, the first German Expressionist movement.
Schmidt-Rottluff was a fellow-student of Heckel at the Chemnitz School in 1905 and moved with him to Dresden to study architecture and paint in a self-taught manner. In 1905, together with Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl he founded the Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge) whose manifesto made clear their intentions to search for a new pictorial language which would represent a break with the past. It was then that the young Karl Schmidt added his birthplace to his name and became Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. In the summers of 1907 and 1912 he went with Erich Heckel to Dangast to paint, while in 1911 he moved to Berlin with the rest of his colleagues, living there for the rest of his life. During World War I he fought on the Russian Front. With the arrival of the Nazi regime his public status declined and he became considered a "degenerate artist" and was expelled from the Fine Arts Academy. During World War II Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's studio was destroyed and with it most of his work. In 1947 the artist was taken on as a teacher at the West Berlin Fine Arts Academy where he had an important influence on the younger generations of painters.
Schmidt-Rottluff's Expressionist pictorial style, with its vigorous brushstroke and brilliant colours, evolved from an early phase influenced by Van Gogh towards flatter and more synthetic forms. Like his colleagues, he made a large number of woodcuts and was the first of the group to make lithographs.
In 1964 Schmidt-Rottluff was the main force behind the Brücke-Museum in Berlin, which was opened in 1967 and showed works donated by the various members of the group.
Grohmann, W.: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Stuttgart, 1956.
Moeller, M. and Schmidt, H.-W.: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Der Maler. Stuttgart, 1992.
Vergo, P.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Twentieth-century German Painting. London, 1992.
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