ART

Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Tiltle: Mountain Landscape from Clavadel

Date:1925–26

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 135 x 200.3 cm (53 1/8 x 78 7/8 in.)

Country of Origin: Germany

Current Location: Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Gallery (Europe)

This painting is a landscape of green, blue, and purple hills.Also there are two small people. One is sitting and the other is standing. They are pictured in the bottom of the painting, but they aren’t very large.There are two purple cabins.  These aren’t too large either. The rest is trees and mountains.

The purple color gives an impression of calmness. In the sky there are white clouds.  The sky is also purple.   I think that this painting is telling a story about simple, carefree life in the mountains in cabins.  It’s the kind of lifestyle that anyone would love to have, with nature at your front door,puffy and white clouds, moving slowly in the sky.  The palette of the painting really gives off a beautiful, warm, calming feeling.This painting is really atmospheric and uplifting. I would love to spend some time in the place like the painted one.
It's interesting that Kirchner suffered a complete mental and physical collapse after being called up for service during World War I; he then settled in Switzerland, hoping the mountain air would cure mind and body. He turned to painting the high Alps, with bold colors and coarse brushwork, suggesting man at peace with nature-an ideal that contrasted sharply with his own wartime experience.