Over the last couple of years there have been several high-quality publications centered on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and this book comes as a valuable addition to them. It is the catalogue for the retrospective that was held until July 2010 at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany,and it follows a rather classic chronological pattern, describing the early years, then the Dresden , the Berlin, the war and the Davos periods. That last period is marked by the appearance of a "new style", characterized by "blocks of color that are frequently outlined" and which lead to a "much more abstract idiom", a "departure from both the expressive and the figurative". As far as this later style is concerned, the authors cannot help admitting that it is still considered uneven, if not weak, when compared to the great expressionist compositions of the 1910's and one is tempted to agree with this remark (a 1932-1934 work such as Color Dance II, illustrated on page 200, pales when compared to Picasso's output of the same period; the 1928-33 portrait of Dr. Carl Hagemann looks like a wan version of Otto Dix's great "New Objectivity" portraits which are contemporary to it).
Now,whatever the doubts one might nourish on the quality of Kirchner's late output, this book is probably the best and most complete on the German painter and it is also a pleasant read, since it tackles a previously unstudied theme: the representation of couples in the artist's oeuvre, based on the study of an unusual and fascinating drawing from a 1927 sketchbook.
The quality of the reproductions is first-rate, which is often the case with Hatje Cantz publications.