Seated Woman in the Studio

The form of the seated woman in this drawing is at first hard to distinguish. Kirchner drew his model, Dodo, in a corner of his studio surrounded by brightly-colored pillows and his own paintings on the wall. Wearing a long, black skirt and a wide-brimmed hat, Dodo leans against a large cushion, her face and arm merely suggested by a dash of orange chalk. The strong, decorative two-dimensionality of the work recalls the paintings of Henri Matisse, whose one-man show Kirchner saw in Berlin in January of 1909.