Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Skizzenbuch II
. 1901/02.
24 sheets Drawings, clot binding. Most in pencil, some ink brush, wash, watercolor, color chalks and pastel.
Signed and dated "1901" on a label on the wrapper. Some sheets titled (1-4, 6,. 7 and 9+10, 12, 16 and 22), one inscribed "7 Minutenskizze" by the artist. Smooth creme paper. Binding: 13 x 20 cm (5.1 x 7.8 in). Sheet, each: 12 x 19 cm (4,7 x 7,4 in).
Bound, 24 sheets (one of them trimmed) with 31 sketches (one of them probably not by Kirchner, reverse of sheet 5) and one blank page. Themes: Street, at the piano, Angermünde church, farmer, at the window, head studies, windmill, Angermünde, old man, view of Wolitzsee, Uncle Otto, landscape, frowning man, near Pillnitz, woman with headscarf, seated couple, bespectacled head, by lamplight, portrait of father, female nude.
On the inside of the cover with one of the two earliest known signatures of the artist (as in the first sketchbook, still without "L" or "Ludwig").
Full cloth binding by the company August Seyfert, Chemnitz. [CH/AR].
• Only very few isolated drawings from Kirchner"s younger years before he studied architecture in Dresden have survived.
• With an extremely rare portrait of the artist"s father.
• Like no other early work by the artist, the young E. L. Kirchner"s sketchbook sheds a revealing light on his development as a draughtsman and painter.
• Amazing artistic variety: Kirchner used pencil, watercolor, pastel and colored chalks.
• No other of the few surviving sketchbooks has been offered on the international auction market for over 20 years (source: artprice.com)
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