Karl Schmidt-Rottluf (1884 - 1976) - German artist, engraver and sculptor, classicist of modernism, one of the most important representatives of expressionism. During a short period of study at the University of Dresden, a budding artist with other like-minded people organized the progressive creative group Bridge. During the Nazi rule, the works of Schmidt, as well as other avant-garde artists, were among the banned, and his works were presented at the exhibition "Degenerative Art". Karl Schmidt was a prolific master, his creative heritage, in addition to numerous paintings, is represented by 300 woodcuts and 70 engravings on other materials, 105 lithographs, 78 commercial print publications.
Creation of the “Bridge” group
In 1905, Schmitt entered the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Dresden. There Erich Haeckel, with whom Schmitt had been friends since 1901, introduced him to aspiring artists Ernst Kirchner, Erich Haeckel and Fritz Blale. Together, they passionately shared similar creative interests, studying architecture as the basis of fine art. Young people founded the Die Brücke group in Dresden on June 7, 1905 with the goal of creating a new uncompromising style that goes against creative traditions. The first exhibition of the association opened in Leipzig in November of that year.
From 1905 to 1911, during the stay of the group in Dresden, all members of the Bridge followed a similar path of development, being strongly influenced by the modernist style and neo-impressionism. In December 1911, Schmidt and part of the group moved from Dresden to Berlin. The group was disbanded in 1913, mainly due to changes in the artistic trends of each individual member. A six-year stay in the Die Brücke association influenced Karl Schmidt's further position in relation to art and the formation of his individual style.
Creativity during the “Bridge” association
In 1906, Schmidt added the creative pseudonym Rothluf to his name - the name of his hometown. The subjects of his paintings most often contain North German and Scandinavian landscapes. Initially, the style of Schmidt-Rottluf's works was still clearly influenced by impressionism, but his works among the works of colleagues on Die Brücke stood out by violation of the laws of composition and simplified forms with exaggerated flatness. At first, in his expressive works, he used the pure tones of the main color scheme, thereby achieving a special transmission of the environment and color intensity. Around 1909, the artist became interested in woodcuts and played an important role in the revival of this ancient technique of wood engraving.
Prone to solitude, Schmidt spent the summer months from 1907 to 1912 off the coast of the Baltic Sea, in Dangast, near Bremen, where he found many motives for his landscape paintings. In 1910, some of his most controversial landscape works were created there, which later received recognition and fame. Having moved to Berlin in 1911, the artist turned to simplification of form, developing a geometrically formal image. Gradually, he began to apply more muffled tones, focusing on the shape circled by a dark contrasting contour and resembling drawing skill. His creative experiments were interrupted by the outbreak of war.
Military and post-war activities
From 1912 to 1920, Schmidt continued to work with woodcuts, the style of which took much more angular outlines, and experimented with carved wood sculptures. Serving in the First World War on the Eastern Front, Karl Schmidt created a cycle of engravings on a religious theme, with the help of which he tried to come to terms with the horrors of war. Subsequently, these works were regarded as a graphic masterpiece of the artist. At the end of the war, he became a member of the Arbeitsrat fr Kunst in Berlin - the anti-academic socialist movement of artists of the period of the German revolution of 1918-1919.
In 1918, Schmidt returned from the front to Berlin, and during the 1920s his working rhythm was restored: in the summer the artist traveled and painted in nature, and in the winter he worked in the studio. A stay in the south of the Baltic Sea in Pomerania, on Lake Lebsky, in the Swiss Taunus mountains, as well as in Rome to study at Villa Massimo (1930) is reflected in his mature still lifes and landscapes.
The angular, contrasting style of Schmidt-Rottluff became more colorful and blurry in the early 1920s, and by the middle of the decade he began to develop into images of flat forms with smooth outlines. Geometric figures and round curved shapes began to occupy more space in his works, starting in 1923.
The artist regularly participated in exhibitions of progressive art. When, after the war, expressionism in Germany was accepted by the general public, the works of Schmidt received recognition, and their author - awards and honors. In 1931, Karl Schmidt-Rotluf was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, from which he was forced to leave two years later. In 1932, he moved to Rumbka near Lake Lebsky in Pomerania.
Artist of "Degenerate Art"
As a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund Association of German Artists since 1927 (since 1928 on the Executive Committee, then a member of the jury), Karl Schmidt-Rottluf participated in the last annual exhibition of the 1936 DKB. Two of his oil paintings were presented: “Snow Creek” and “Evening by the Creek”. In 1937, 608 works by Schmidt were confiscated by the Nazis from German museums as examples of “degenerative art”, some of which were shown at the exhibition “Degenerate Art”. In the courtyard of the Berlin firehouse on March 20, 1939, many of Karl Schmidt-Rotluff's paintings were burned. The artist was deprived of all his awards and posts, in 1941 he was expelled from the professional association and received a ban on painting.
In September 1942, Karl Schmidt stayed with Count von Moltke in the Chrysau Castle in Lower Silesia. There, despite the ban, he painted numerous landscapes, especially views of the park, fields, Mount Zobten. Only a few of these watercolors, passed on to friends, were preserved, the rest were destroyed in 1945. Schmidt retired to Chemnitz, where he stayed from 1943 to 1946. His Berlin apartment and studio were destroyed by bombing, and most of his work was destroyed with them.
After the second world war
Karl Schmidt-Rotluf's reputation was gradually rehabilitated after the war. In 1947, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he had a great influence on the new generation of German artists. Since 1950, he was reinstated in the German Association of Artists, from which he participated in annual exhibitions between 1951 and 1976 five times.
In 1964, he created a fund of works, which served as the basis for the Museum Bridge in West Berlin. Museum Die Brcke, which is the repository of the works of members of the group, was opened in 1967.
In 1956, Schmidt, who was considered an innovator and revolutionary in the field of German fine art, was awarded the highest award in West Germany - the Order of Merit Pour le Mrite, and his works were classified as classical. In the GDR, the work of Karl Schmidt-Rothluf, like other expressionists, fell into the maelstrom of debates about formalism, determined by the ideology of socialist realism in the late 1940s. His paintings in the GDR were hardly bought, and there were very few exhibitions until 1982.
After the death of Karl Schmidt, numerous retrospectives in the Federal Republic paid tribute to the memory of this artist, who, according to the unanimous opinion of art historians, was one of the most important German expressionists.