Kirchner settled in Berlin in 1911, and the works he created there up to 1915 emanate the vibrancy of the modern city. He was fascinated by the dazzling world of the Berlin nightlife with its variety shows with acrobats and dancers. Since 1914, street scenes became increasingly important in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's works and today they are among the artist's most sought-after motifs. Kirchner was particularly interested in the cocottes, prostitutes that could be found all over the city, strolling the streets of Berlin in eye-catching plumed hats or coats with feathered collars, attracting the attention of potential customers. Randomly appearing people in the street, whether the cocottes or regular citizens, became the protagonists of his art. Swift and fleeting accounts of passers-by in a very small section of the street makes up an independent group of works in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's oeuvre. Extreme perspectives and an outstanding pictorial inventiveness characterize the works from this period. He made dense compositions with individual parts that have to be sorted by the eye first. In a letter to Gustav Schiefler, Kirchner described what fascinated him about the present scene of the seated cocotte: "The seated woman is a cocotte in a white blouse on a bench, as they often do in summer, waiting for a cavalier. For me, the pink arched light makes spatiality entirely void, especially on hazy days, so that such visionary images emerge. She leans on an umbrella with one hand. The modern embroidered blouses were often so ingeniously made that they made the impression of naked skin from a distance." (E.L. Kirchner in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, April 30, 1919, quoted from Wolfgang Henze, Briefwechsel, 1910-1935/38, p. 124). The artist's typical graphic manner was also formative for his lithographs. This technique offered Kirchner the option to transfer an idea directly into a graphic process. Large format lithographs are not uncommon in Kirchner's print oeuvre, which suggests that Kirchner had access to large litho stones, the entire surface of which he used for his work. Kirchner's extensive body of print art would be inconceivable without lithography, as the realized important works in the medium and also made accomplishments that are second to none in Expressionism. The ‘nervous’ line became characteristic of this time, also in prints. He used dense, jagged hatchings as a stylistic element, which, free from the outlined forms, form bundles of pure graphic energy. While they often sacrifice the clarity of the composition, they add energetic dynamics to the composition. It's not about the movement of the motif, it's about capturing the rhythm of the big city as the force of life. [SM]