Tanzschule Wigman. Um 1926.
Gouache over black chalks.
With the estate stamp of the Kunstmuseums Basel (Lugt 1570 b) and the hand-written registration number "A Da/Be 22" on the reverse. On brownish wove paper. 34 x 48.2 cm (13.3 x 18.9 in), the full sheet. [CH].

• With this multi-figure, colorful depiction, the artist combines important themes of his art: the female nude, dance and movement.
• Dance has played an important role in Kirchner's oeuvre since the scenes from the dance cafés and variety shows in Dresden around 1905.
• In the 1920s, Kirchner met Mary Wigman and Gret Palucca, important dancers of the time, and became intensively involved with modern dance.
• The artist visited the modern, progressive Wigman Ballet School in Dresden during a trip in 1926 (cf., among others, Presler, sketchbook Skb 127).
• In Mary Wigman's expressive dance, Kirchner sees the former program of the "Brücke" artists from 1906 implemented, the direct and unadulterated reproduction of "what urges to create".

The present work is documented at the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Artist's estate (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart (1954).
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich.
Private collection Northern Germany (acquired from the above in 1985).

EXHIBITION: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Graphik, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, September 6 - October 26, 1985, cat. no. 97 (color illu. p. 117).

"First great impression today at Mary Wigman. I feel the parallel, as expressed in her dances, in the movement of the masses, which reinforce the individual movement. It is infinitely stimulating and attractive to draw these body movements. [.] Yes, what we suspected has become reality. The new art is here. Mary Wigman unconsciously uses much of the modern pictures and the creation of a modern concept of beauty is at work in her dances as well as in my pictures."
E. L. Kirchner, January 16, 1926, in: Lothar Grisebach (ed.), Davoser Tagebuch, Stuttgart 1998, p. 126.

"I'm now doing a lot of work and drawing every day at the Wigman dance school. This dance gives me a lot, it's very much connected to our modern age."
E. L. Kirchner to his partner Erna Schilling, letter dated February 2, 1926, quoted from: Hans Delfs (ed.), E. L. Kirchner. Der gesamte Briefwechsel, Zurich 2010, no. 1650.