Nude Girl

1906

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Artist, German, 1880 - 1938

Printed with thick, bold outlines and areas of flat black against cream-white paper, a nude woman bends at the waist against what could be a bed in this stylized, square woodcut print. The woman’s form is loosely outlined so details are indistinct, but she seems to rest her face on one bent forearm, braced on the surface across which she lies. Her body bends at the hips so her toes brush the floor along the bottom edge of the print. Her eye, nose, and lips are boldly outlined and she has small breasts and her groin is delineated. Curving lines in the area around her suggests fabric or a bed. The background above her and the area below her face, along the right edge of the paper, are swallowed in blackness.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    woodcut printed in black

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen

  • Dimensions

    image: 24 x 24 cm (9 7/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
    sheet: 25.7 x 24.8 cm (10 1/8 x 9 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    2012.92.677

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Dube 1967, Vol. (W), no. 89


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Roman Norbert Ketterer, Lugano); Ruth Kainen, Washington, D.C., purchased October 31, 1979; gift to NGA, 2012.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1967

  • Dube, Annemarie and Wolf-Dieter Dube. E.L. Kirchner; das graphische Werke. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1967, no. (W) 89a

Inscriptions

verso bottom edge by later hand in graphite: Schiefler I. Sch Dr 32 N.41; 184; K 601; C 237

Wikidata ID

Q76557650


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