Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born on 6 May 1880 in Aschaffenburg. As a founding member of the artist group "Brücke", the German painter and graphic artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is one of the most important representatives of German expressionism. His expressionist main work is concerned with the hustle and bustle of life in the metropolis, which he expresses through highly simplified forms.
Evidently, Kirchner is already three years old. His father preserved the early testimony of his talent. The family moves several times: Frankfurt am Main, pearls near Lucerne, Chemnitz. At the age of twenty, the first of a hundred and eighty sketchbooks was created. In 1901, Kirchner began his architectural studies at the Technical University of Dresden, which he successfully completed in 1905. He made his acquaintance with Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, with whom he founded the artist group "Brücke" on June 7, 1905. In the same year, he worked on the "quarter-hour acts." One year later Pechstein and Nolde also joined the "bridge" painters. In 1908 Kirchner first painted on Fehmarn. The summer 1909 Kirchner spent with Heckel and Pechstein and the child model Fränzi Fehrmann for the first time at the Moritzburger ponds, north of Dresden. This is repeated in the summer of 1910 and 1911. In 1910 he met Otto Mueller. He visited Gustav Schiefler and Rosa Schapire in Hamburg, contacted Karl Ernst Osthaus, whom he met during the following years Henry van de Velde, Ernst Gosebruch, Carl Hagemann and Ludwig Schames. In October 1911 Kirchner left Dresden to improve his professional possibilities in Berlin. In 1912 he met Erna Schilling, who remained with him as his life companion. In 1915 he was drafted for military service, and after a short time he collapsed physically and mentally. After some stays in the sanatorium, he travels to Davos in 1917 to seek recovery. He stayed in Switzerland and settled down near Davos in Frauenkirch in the house "In den Lärchen". In 1923 he rented a house on the "Wildboden". In 1926 he traveled to Germany for the first time, visited his mother in Chemnitz and Fränzi Fehrmann in Dresden. In 1937 639 of his works were removed as "degenerate" from German museums. On 15 June 1938, at the age of fifty-eight, Kirchner chose to commit suicide.