Women in Green’, by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

In 1914 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1882-1976) spent the summer in Hohwacht, a somewhat remote municipality in northern Germany surrounded by pristine nature. Here, he painted Frauen im Grünen: two women in nature, seemingly lost in thoughts. At this time, Schmidt-Rottluff painted comparable portraits of his close family and friends who accompanied him.

“There is something fateful about the women, who embody the heavy mood of the landscape, as they longingly spread their arms towards the sun, stand dreaming in the 'twilight' on the beach, striding through the lonely forest surrounded by sunbeams, sitting sorrowfully on the seashore while awaiting their human fate"

Art historian Dr. Rosa Schapire wrote this in 1939 about, amongst others, the transitional work Frauen im Grünen, which she had received from the artist. Schapire was a friend, advocate and patron of the artists' group Die Brücke and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in particular. In this capacity, she had the opportunity to bring their work to the attention of the public. Her patronage contributed significantly to the formation and reception of the movement. In order to ensure international distribution and recognition of Schmidt-Rottluff's work, she bequeathed part of her Schmidt-Rottluff collection to museums in Germany, the Netherlands, Chicago and Tel Aviv.

Because of Schapire we know that in the summer of 1914 Schmidt-Rottluff had already been aware that his time of freedom was over - the threat of the First World War was already in the air. As a document of the coming war, it is remarkable that the two women are the most prominent subject of the painting. All portrayed women in his works of around 1914 have these similar anonymous features. Some of these women are recognized as ‘Schwestern’, while others are referred to as ‘Frauen’ or ‘Freundinnen’. My study has shown that the women most likely can be identified as the sisters Kiefer, who were friends of Schmidt-Rottluff and visited him in 1914 in Hohwacht. Besides their presence in Hohwacht, the most important source to determine their identities is Schmidt-Rottluff’s woodcut of 1914 with the title Die Schwestern Kiefer. The similarities between the painting and the woodcut are undeniable. The sisters are depicted sitting in a depressed or hopeless pose. Take note of their hanging heads and hunched shoulders. They have been depersonalized, rendered nearly anonymous. As Schmidt-Rottluff provided the woodcut of 1914 with the caption ‘Die Schwestern Kiefer’,  it is not likely that he necessarily wanted these two figures to stay unidentified. It is more likely that the anonymization stemmed from Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s interest in African sculpture from Ivory Coast. The artist developed a preoccupation for this kind of sculpture, which was available to him in ethnological museums in Dresden and Berlin, resulting in his own collection. Stemming from this interest Schmidt-Rottluff reduced everything to the essential in order to achieve the highest and purest level of expression.

The premonition of the First World War, that governed Schmidt-Rottluff’s thoughts, must have come at the expense of his joyful experience of life. The darkness that had suddenly washed over life left its mark on his artistic oeuvre. Frauen im Grünen emphasizes the manner in which the artist’s mood influenced the choices for motifs and style. The motif of the sisters Kiefer became for Schmidt-Rottluff the personifications of a melancholic mood, a mood enhanced by the surrounding nature.

Author: Jenny van Calsbeek

These discoveries resulted from a research project that took place as part of the Collections & Artefacts course (2021), Master's track in Art History at the University of Groningen, supervised by dr. Peter de Ruiter.