karl schmidt-rottluff // biography (1884–1976) / gallery / prints

/Biog./

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Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Bildnis Valentiner 1

// B I O G . //
K A R L S C H M I D T - R O T T L U F F

Known as: German expressionist painter

Date of birth: December 1, 1884 (Rottluff near Chemnitz, Saxony)

Birth name: Karl Schmidt

Date of death: August 10, 1976 (Berlin)

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff became one of the leaders of German Expressionism, especially in the graphic arts (there are some 700 engravings and lithographs by him).

He studied architecture in Dresden, where he met Kirchner, and in 1906 he met Nolde.

In 1905 he was one of the founders of the Brucke with Nolde and Heckel. He went to Norway in 1911 and settled in Berlin in that year, where he met Feininger.

During the 1920s his art became rather more naturalistic, although still much influenced by Negro art and by Cubism and with great stress on the outline. He was particularly persecuted by the Nazis, being expelled from the Prussian Academy in 1933 and, in 1941, forbidden to paint at all and supervised by the Nazi police. Over 600 of his pictures were removed from German galleries. After 1945 he was reinstated and lived in East Germany.

There are pictures by him in London (Tate) and New York (M of MA), and once again in German galleries (Berlin - where he founded a Brucke Mus. in 1967 - and Hamburg.

Trivia:

Began to call himself Schmidt-Rottluff in 1905 at the age of 20.
Die Brücke translates as "the bridge".
The Brücke group lasted from 1905 - 1913.
Several of his works were shown in exhibitions of degenerate art (Entartete Kunst).
Schmidt-Rottluff was appointed a professor at the University of Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg two years after the end of the 2nd World War in 1947.