Collection Publications: Klinger to Kollwitz Labels8

After the dissolution of the Brücke in 1913, Kirchner occasionally returned to one of the group's favorite themes-nude bathers in landscape settings in a variety of media. This composition is identical to that of a colored woodcut, also dated 1925, the year the artist broke away from his isolated life in the remote Swiss alps. He returned to Germany and places he had worked with other Brücke artists, which prompted recollections of the group's excursions to the Moritzburg lakes near Dresden. Although Two Bathing Girls preserves the minimal calligraphy of Kirchner's earlier figurative etchings, the forms are more lyrical than expressive-in keeping with Kirchner's move toward an increasingly decorative style in his later years. Despite his productivity, however, his deteriorating mental and physical health, together with the Nazi's condemnation of his art, led to his suicide in 1938.