Artistin (Marcella)

Around 1910 the young painters who called themselves Die Brücke were living and working together in Dresden, and they had thrown out almost everything the academies taught. Instead of hiring professional models who held a pose for hours, they painted friends and children who moved freely around the studio. Marcella was one of them, a girl from the neighbourhood who sat for several of the group. Kirchner painted her fast, in flat hot colour, the drawing carried by a few nervous lines rather than careful modelling. The title casts her as an Artistin, a variety-stage performer, which fit the group's fascination with cabaret and circus. Kirchner kept the canvas until 1914, when he gave it to Botho Graef, a classics professor in Jena who was one of his earliest supporters.