Alpine Huts in Fog 1920

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this etching, Alpine Huts in Fog, at an unknown date. It shows two figures outside a building in a mountain landscape. The image uses visual codes from German Expressionism to express psychological states. Kirchner was part of the Die Brücke group in Dresden before World War I. The group looked to non-western art for ways to represent emotional experience through distorted forms, flattened space, and intense color. After the war Kirchner lived in the Swiss Alps, where he developed a new style influenced by Cubism and a return to more traditional landscape. But the influence of Expressionism remains. As historians we use archival material, letters, and exhibition reviews to understand the social and institutional context of this work. Kirchner lived through a period of upheaval in Germany as well as personal trauma, so we may see his mark-making as an indication of social alienation.