Bidspirit auction | Ernst Kirchner: Downfall: Kern and

Ernst Kirchner: Downfall: Kern and the Smuggle - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938) After: Downfall: Kern and the Smuggler, 1923. Woodcut on cream wove paper. (Niedergang: Kern und der Schmuggler) (in-text plate, page 106) from Neben der Heerstrasse (Off the Main Road), unframed, unsigned and mounted to mat. Publisher, Verlag von Grethlein And Co., Zurich/Leipzig. Printer, E. Haberland, Leipzig, Germany. Unknown edition. Using the woodcut technique, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created twenty-two illustrations, the title page, and the cover for this collection of six novellas by Swiss author Jakob Bosshart. Bosshart's novellas, written between 1917 and 1922, feature peculiar characters off the beaten track. The protagonists are predominantly village people struggling with a variety of moral conflicts, often triggered by the challenges of modernization. Kirchner's affinity for Bosshart's texts was likely related to his own interest in the vernacular traditions and folk culture of the area. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brucke or ”The Bridge”, a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art.