Die Brücke / “Degenerate Art”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Emmy Frisch in Rocking Chair (Emmy Frisch im Schaukelstuhl), 1908
Oil on canvas
151.5 × 74.5 cm (59.1 × 29.3 in)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Emmy Frisch, a photographer and later the wife of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, moved quietly yet decisively within the Die Brücke circle. Born in 1884 and living until 1975, she witnessed the full arc of German Expressionism, from its early rebellion to its later condemnation as “degenerate art.” Her photographic work—intimate, immediate, and unguarded—helped shape the group’s shared visual language. She was not merely a sitter but an active presence in the creative life of Die Brücke.

Kirchner’s portrait of her, Emmy Frisch im Schaukelstuhl, captures this closeness with striking immediacy. His angular contours and vibrating colour fields turn a moment of domestic stillness into something psychologically alive. The rocking chair becomes a place of presence rather than repose; Emmy’s form, rendered with Kirchner’s nervous, searching line, seems to hover between calm and intensity. The painting carries the early Brücke energy—raw, intimate, and unfiltered.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), one of the founders of Die Brücke, helped propel German modernism toward a new emotional directness. Although many Brücke artists knew members of the Berlin Secession, the two groups diverged sharply in spirit. In 1910, when 27 largely expressionist artists were rejected by the Secession jury, Max Pechstein brought Die Brücke into the newly formed Neue Secession, giving Expressionism a platform that welcomed its urgency rather than resisting it.

Kirchner’s later years were marked by profound strain. The trauma of his wartime service, ongoing health struggles, and the Nazi regime’s branding of his work as “degenerate art” placed immense pressure on him. In 1938, living in exile in Switzerland and feeling increasingly isolated, he died by suicide. His death is often understood as the culmination of psychological suffering intensified by political persecution and the dismantling of the artistic world he had helped to build.

Yet paintings like this one endure as reminders of what Die Brücke truly stood for: friendship, artistic courage, and a shared belief that authenticity—however unsettling—was worth pursuing.