Photo: Sven Döring / Agentur Focus, Dresden Elbland
Dresden Elbland and Expressionism
Bridging: The artists of the BRÜCKE
On 7 June 1905 in Dresden, when the four young student architects Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff founded the BRÜCKE quartet, they issued a broadside: “With faith in development and in nurturing creators as well as lovers of art, we now call on all today’s youth to rally. We, the young standard bearers of the future, want to pave the way for people to live and act more freely, whatever the powers that be may say. All those who render what impels them to create directly and unhindered are one of us.” The permanent exhibition in the Albertinum, which testifies to the longevity of these sentiments, is especially worth a visit.
Inspirational: The BRÜCKE at Moritzburg
Art aiming to depict landscapes authentically and with immediacy needs to be created close to the landscape that it portrays. Moritzburg left its imprint on the BRÜCKE creative repertoire, with Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner spending summers here from 1909 to 1911, joined by Max Pechstein in 1910. A short time together, a unifying style – and fascinating motifs. Abundant new hotels, inns, tourist restaurants and entertainment venues breathed new life into Moritzburg and it became a go-to vacation spot for wealthy Dresdeners, for breezes in summer and winter pleasures just a stone’s throw from the big city. Innumerable objects that inspired the BRÜCKE collective and their sketches, drawings, prints and oil paintings abound here to this day.
