Lot 52 Dα

With the thematic complex of the Berlin street scenes from 1914/1915, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner reaches the pinnacle of his expressive powers, culminating in his famous series of scenes from the metropolis. “He abstracts the compulsion of the masses, the hectic quality of the traffic and the coquettes proffering themselves into a sensory experience and transforms everything into a resonant language possessing its own distinctive beauty. The rhythm of the metropolis Berlin pulsates in his ‘Straßenszenen’” (Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Die Straßenszenen 1913-1915, Munich 1993, pp. 25 f.).
Between his sketches of the pulsating nightlife and their realisation in the form of paintings, we often find the medium of printmaking, which forced the artist to clarify their forms. The drawings, but also the etchings – such as the extremely rare sheet “Kokotten bei Nacht” – are characterised by speed and spontaneity. Driven by his own nervous anxiety and the speed all round him, Kirchner captured what was, for him, essential: the fleeting sensory impressions of the crowds of people, the traffic and the lights. Angular, agitated, overlapping strokes define the impression conveyed by the picture.
The luxuriance of the big feathered hats and feather boas, with which the “coquettes at night” of the title draw attention to themselves, stand in contrast to a scene otherwise defined by sharp angles. The two prostitutes are depicted as three-quarter figures in the foreground and are separated from one another by the street corner, which seems to thrust itself between them in the form of a sharp-edged wedge. The etching captivates its viewers through its formal rigour and the nuances among the sharp-edged lines of the impression.
The basis for the etching was a sketch from Kirchner's sketchbook of 1913 (cf. Presler Skb 37-43).