Mountain Landscape from Clavadel

In October 1925 Kirchner wrote in his diary that his fear of his own country had to come to an end. He had been living in the mountains around Davos since 1917, and that December he went back to Germany for the first time, through Frankfurt, Chemnitz, Dresden and Berlin, seeing family, dealers and museum people, before returning to the Alps in March 1926. On the back of this canvas he wrote its title, Mountain Landscape from Clavadel, and two years, 25 and 26, the winter of that journey falling between them. Clavadel is a hamlet on the slope just above Davos. The picture is big, about two metres wide, and the Boston museum points to its bold colour and coarse brushwork. It came straight out of the painter's estate in 1954, through the young Basel dealer Ernst Beyeler, and Boston bought it two years later.