Karl Schmidt-Rottluff und die Brücke

In the organizer's words:

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff is a leading representative of German Expressionism. Born in Chemnitz (Rottluff), today he is regarded as the city's most internationally significant artist. He founded the Brücke group of artists in Dresden in 1905 with his friends Fritz Bleyl, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel. Kirchner and Heckel, his school friend, also grew up in Chemnitz, so that Chemnitz can be considered the nucleus of the Brücke. Schmidt-Rottluff, a self-taught artist, advocated free, non-academic art. This was intended to give direct expression to the connection between life, experience and creativity.
The Chemnitz Art Collections house one of the largest collections of his paintings and graphic works. Already in the early 1920s, the museum and its director Friedrich Schreiber-Weigand cultivated a close and continuous relationship with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The selection made here shows important paintings and documents by the artist from all phases of his work, representative works by the Brücke artists and representatives of classical modernism from the collection. Also on display is the exquisite wooden sculpture Standing (1920) by Erich Heckel, which was acquired for the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in 2023.