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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was taught drawing while he was still at school. In 1890 the family moved to Chemnitz in Saxony. In 1901 he finished school. In the same year he began studying architecture at the Technical University in Dresden. At the same time, he pursued his artistic interests and attended a private art school. In 1903 and 1904 he interrupted his studies in Dresden and enrolled at the Technical University in Munich. There he visited an exhibition where he came across the works of the artist group "Phalanx" and the French Neo-Impressionists. In 1904 he returned to Dresden and continued his education. It was during this time that the first woodcuts and the first pictures, which were still in the style of Art Nouveau, were made. He met the painters Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. They founded the artist group "Die Brücke" together in 1905.
Kirchner began with the "quarter-hour nudes," drawings based on nude models in the studio or in nature. The following year, Kirchner took over Erich Heckel's studio in Dresden. Kirchner turned to landscape, city and vaudeville motifs, but also painted portraits. His painting style was still based on the post-impressionist movement. In 1906 the first etchings and lithographs as well as sculptural works were created, mostly as small-format stone sculptures. The following year he made the first painted self-portrait with a pipe. In 1910 he met the painter Otto Mueller in Berlin and joined the artists' association "Neue Secession", which was led by Max Pechstein. Kirchner made wooden sculptures. His visits to the Dresden Ethnological Museum inspired him to do this work. In 1911 he moved to Berlin with the other artists from the "Brücke". In the big city he dedicated himself to the world of circus and variety shows in his paintings and graphic works.
In the same year, alongside Max Pechstein, he became a co-founder of the Institute "Modern Teaching in Painting" (MUIM). The company was not successful. In 1912 he took part in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. After the group "Die Brücke" disbanded in 1913, Kirchner moved on to painting numerous large-format pictures of street scenes, such as the title "Berlin Street Scene". In the same year the artist had his first solo exhibition at the Folkwang Museum in Hagen. Kirchner volunteered for military service. He was employed as a driver in an artillery regiment in 1915 and 1916. The war experiences took such a physical and mental toll on him that he went to a sanatorium in Königstein and was released from military service. After his recovery, he moved to Davos in Switzerland in 1917. There he painted over his old pictures and gave them later dates. He wanted to achieve a different art historical classification of his works.
In 1921 his pictures were exhibited in the section of the National Gallery of the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin. In 1922 Kirchner took over the illustration of Jakob Bosshart's novella cycle "Neben der Heerstrasse". The work was published in Leipzig and Zurich in 1923. During this time he also made large-format wall paintings. The following year, 1924, he moved to a farmhouse in Frauenkirch-Wildboden near Davos. In 1924, some works were created that are among the major works such as "Black Cat", "Before Sunrise" and "The Friends". They make clear a change in Kirchner's painting that affects thematic and formal diversity. In 1926 he took a trip to Germany. During this time he suffered from depression and attacks of weakness. From 1930 onwards, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner found a linear, abstract painting style that characterizes his late work. Kirchner's pictures have highly simplified forms and show the hustle and bustle of big city life. In it he reveals himself as a precise observer who reproduces his perception in an expressionistically heightened manner.
He implemented the motifs of the mountain world during his Swiss creative period in bizarre colors, rejecting established artistic ideas. In 1933, the year the National Socialists came to power, the artist had an exhibition in the Berne Kunsthalle. In 1936, four landscape paintings with a dark expression were created. He carved a five-figure relief for the portal of the new school building in Davos Frauenkirch. This was followed in 1937 by solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle in Basel and at the Art Museum in Detroit, USA. At the same time, 32 works were shown at the National Socialist exhibition "Degenerate Art" and the artist was defamed as "degenerate". The Nazi regime confiscated a total of 639 works from public museums and exhibition venues. Many of them were destroyed. This loss led to deep depression and ultimately suicide.
On June 15, 1938, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner shot himself in his house in Frauenkirch-Wildboden.
