Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) is one of the most important German expressionist artists. In 1933, he curated a showcase of his works at the Berne Kunsthalle. Over 90 years later, the Berne Museum of Fine Arts is hosting a new Kirchner retrospective entitled “Kirchner x Kirchner”. The highlight of the exhibition is the two oil paintings “Sunday in the Alps. The scene at the well” (from the museum’s own collection) and its pendant “Sunday of the Mountain Farmers” (from Berlin’s Federal Chancellery) being shown together again after more than 90 years. Both large-format (170 x 400 cm) tableaux hung in the entrance hall of the Kunsthalle in 1933 during Kirchner’s retrospective. But they have never been seen together since. These monumental works are now appearing side by side in Berne until January. Kirchner produced them in the mid-1920s in Davos, where he had been recovering from the First World War since 1917 – and would remain until committing suicide in 1938.
After the Nazis seized power, Kirchner’s art was increasingly banned and defamed. In 1937, many of his 600 confiscated works appeared in a Nazi propaganda exhibition of “degenerate art” in Munich.
As a symbol of reparation, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt decorated the German government offices with works by expressionist artists in 1975. He gave Kirchner’s “Sunday of the Mountain Farmers” pride of place in the cabinet room in Bonn. The painting moved to the cabinet room of Berlin’s new Federal Chancellery in 2001.
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