Essay by Jason Myers, Class of 2005

Erich Heckel began his career as an architectural student at the Technical Academy in Dresden, along with his childhood friend, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Together, with Ernst Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl, they co-founded the important German Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge). All four were self-taught painters and printmakers. Schmidt-Roluff named the association, inspired by a passage from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is a going across and a going under" (Thieme 5).

The Brücke kept their artistic styles close to earlier Nordic art, combining influences from the Old Masters as well as The Fauvist and Cubist movements along with late nineteenth-century expressionist works of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. Heckel's works from the early 1920s reflect his dedication to the belief that "the unconscious and the involuntary are the sources of artistic power [and can thus create].a spiritualized apocalyptic atmosphere" (Baron 250). During this time, he focused on themes that expressed the depression and loneliness of the human condition.

Heckel's 1945 woodcut is a copy of an earlier 1924 oil painting. In these works, Heckel reflected his German heritage by relating a sympathetic view of three working-class German men next to either a doorway or window that is overlooking several pine trees atop the Ore Mountains. The seated man displays a sense of disappointment, based on the empty look in his eyes and the manner in which he supports his head with his hand. The man in the center seems to be in a state of disbelief because his eyes, although wide open, are framed within a blank stare. The third man on the left appears to be deep in thought because of his furrowed brow and gaze. These workers represent a realistic look at the emotional stress felt by German working-class individuals at this time, and the confusion, frustration and emptiness they were consequently experiencing.

As with most avant-garde art of his generation, the Nazis labeled Heckel's works as degenerate in 1937. Consequently, his pieces were barred from museums throughout Germany. Furthermore, just before the end of World War II, his studio was bombed in an air raid, destroying much of his collection. His later works were overshadowed by his earlier artistic productions as demonstrated in this woodcut, translated from an earlier oil painting. Heckel simplified his detail and color by using the woodcut medium, which added a more reductive modernist quality to the composition.