Armierungssoldat - Sapper

Depicts a head and shoulder portrait of a German soldier. Another soldier views the scene from behind. The print was published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1920. The work's black and white contrasts and sharp aggressive lines reflect the ideas and concerns of the German Expressionists of which he was a founder. Erich Heckel (1883-1970) was a German painter, printmaker and sculptor. He studied architecture in Dresden where he met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl, with whom he founded the Die Brücke group ("The Bridge") which existed 1905-1913 and aimed to make a "bridge" between traditional neo-romantic German painting and modern expressionist painting. As a founding member, he made much use of the print as a cheap and quick medium with which to produce affordable art. Most of his life he spent on printmaking and made many prints, most of which were produced from 1903-23. His prints reveal that Heckel became increasingly interested in formal pictorial composition. The mood of his works became more melancholy, and he subdued his previously bright colours. He often focused on themes of illness and introspection. He served with an Ambulance Unit in Flanders during the First World War. After the war he lived in Berlin. In 1937 the Nazi Party declared his work "degenerate"; it forbade him to show his work in public, and over 700 items of his art were confiscated from the nation's museums. In 1944 he fled to Switzerland and by this year all of his woodcut blocks and print plates had been destroyed. After World War II Heckel lived near Lake Constance, teaching at the Karlsruhe Academy until 1955. He continued painting until his death at Radolfzell in 1970.