Curt Ehrhardt
‘Death before Seven Corpses on Christ’s Hill’
Artist
Curt Ehrhardt
1895 Ziesar bei Jerichow - Schwarz, Hessen 1972
Further information
Verso altes typografisches Etikett "585".
Exhibition
16. Ausstellung des Deutschen Künstlerbundes, veranstaltet vom Kunstverein Hamburg in der Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1921, verso mit dem typografischen Etikett "H.K.V. 1217".
Literature
Arlt, Peter, Des Lebens dunkle Tänze. Der Maler Curt Ehrhardt 1895–1972, Weimar 2002, pp. 163 and 165, no. ill.
Provenance
The artist’s estate, inherited by K. J. Winter (presumably the artist’s stepson);
Private collection, southern Germany, acquired in the late 1960s as part of the aforementioned collection.
Private collection, southern Germany, acquired in the late 1960s as part of the aforementioned collection.
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Description
Curt Ehrhardt cultivated close ties with the Berlin avant-garde from an early age and studied law there from 1916. Nevertheless, Brandenburg remained the centre of his life after his family moved there as early as 1900. In particular, his association with the November Group (from 1919) and his contacts with the Sturm circle around Herwarth Walden gave him access to prestigious exhibitions, including the International Exhibition of Expressionist Art in Chicago in 1921.
In this work, Ehrhardt breaks with the colourful Expressionism of the pre-war period. With crystalline structures and a religious-morbid symbolism, it is characteristic of Ehrhardt’s processing of the trauma of the First World War. Space and body seem to flow into one another; there is no classical perspective, but rather a dynamic layering of surfaces.
In this work, Ehrhardt breaks with the colourful Expressionism of the pre-war period. With crystalline structures and a religious-morbid symbolism, it is characteristic of Ehrhardt’s processing of the trauma of the First World War. Space and body seem to flow into one another; there is no classical perspective, but rather a dynamic layering of surfaces.