Collection: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff   1884 - 1976 

Karl Schmidt was born in Rottluff near Chemnitz in 1884 and met Erich Heckel at grammar school in 1902 where they joined the debating society 'Vulkan'. Karl Schmidt began studying architecture at the polytechnical university of Dresden in 1905. Through Heckel he got to know Fritz Bleyl and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and they founded the artists’ association 'Brücke'. Karl Schmidt added Rottluff (the place where he was born) to his surname in 1906 when he also abandoned his courses to devote himself completely to painting.

His strong inclination to withdraw to the remote scenery of the North Sea and Baltic characterizes Schmidt-Rottluff's artistic personality and makes him the loner of the 'Brücke' group. His move to Berlin in 1911 brought him in contact with the international avantgarde. Cubism, Futurism and African tribal art worked as a stimulus for his own art from 1912 onwards. In the same year he took part in the 'Sonderbund Ausstellung' in Cologne. After the disbanding of the "Brücke" in 1913 Schmidt-Rottluff developed a monumental and stylised artistic vocabulary.