Portrait of Hans Frisch

Born in Germany, Kirchner attended art school in Munich 1903–04. With the onset of World War I, Kirchner joined the military in 1914, and soon after his mobilization, he suffered a physical and mental breakdown. Sent to Switzerland to recover, he eventually settled and continued his work in isolation from outside influences, painting the simple life of the Swiss mountains. His late styles remained boldly innovative. In 1937, 639 of his works were declared “degenerate” and confiscated from German museums by the Nazis.
Kirchner’s portrait of his good friend Hans Frisch shows the Dresden poet seated on a sofa. His legs are tucked up under him, with his right hand resting on his calf, while his left hand holds a cigar or cigarette to his mouth. His suit is painted in blues and blacks, with bright pink outlines and underpainting. The cushions and forms of the sofa are painted in yellow, as are his hand and face, with splashes of red, blue and green. The area behind the sofa on the left is painted in dark blue with two muddy colored stripes with red dots. On the right above his head and in the center are the green leaves of a plant; the leaves on the right are outlined in red and highlighted with blue. The paint surface indicates he used not only a brush, but also thick oil colors squeezed from the tube or spread on with a palette knife. It is, perhaps, the most thickly painted of Kirchner’s canvases. Kirchner did several graphic works, including a woodcut in 1907, depicting Frisch.