HECKEL, Erich (Döbeln, 1883 – Radolfzell, 1970)
Together with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel was the founder of the artistic association Brücke, established in Dresden in 1905. Both a painter and a printmaker, the artist started his career in 1904 as an architecture student at the Sächsische Technische Hochschule in Dresden. Whilst he was working as a draughtsman for the architect Wilhelm Kreis, Heckel managed the organisation of Brücke by both spurring its public exhibitions and providing material such as paintings and pieces of furniture of his own production. Heckel strongly privileged working as a printmaker and specialised in woodcut and lithography, producing throughout his artistic career approximately 1000 graphic works. Heckel’s earlier subject-matter often included portraits of individuals belonging to his near environment. The scenes were usually rendered with over simplified forms within bi-dimensional surfaces and his female models were often caught in ambiguous and sensual postures as epitomised by the 1909 Man and Woman (Berlin, Brücke Museum) as well as the 1910 Girl with Doll (Fränzi) (New York, Museum for German and Austrian Art). From 1907 to 1911 Heckel spent his summers between Dangast and the lakes of Moritzburg where he mostly produced landscape paintings such as Haus in Dangast (1908, Bremen, Kunsthalle). Along with other members of Brücke, the artist’s interest in nature fully blossomed with the series of plein-air compositions that featured nude women bathing. In 1911, Heckel moved to Berlin where the group continued its artistic activities until
it was officially dismantled in 1913. The city became a fundamental visual source that inspired his metropolitan works, including scenes of circus, cabaret and cityscapes. In Berlin Heckel also met artists such as Feininger and Macke and admired the works of avant-garde movements, particularly Italian Futurism. His expressionist realism was characterised by melancholic or suffering atmospheres enhanced by the abrupt use of primary colours. In 1912 Heckel and Kirchner were both invited to participate at the Sonderbund’s exhibition in Cologne and were commissioned the decoration of the Jan Thorn-Prikker chapel. During World War I Heckel was posted to Flanders as a medical attendant and was able to continue his work, also encouraged by his senior officer, the art historian Walter Kaesbach, who later became one of his best patrons. After the war Heckel returned to Berlin and recurrently became involved with activist groups such the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Worker’s Council of Art) and the Novembergruppe, which sprang from the advent of the German November Revolution. When the Nazis began their political rise his art was condemned by the authorities for not embodying the National Socialist virtues and
a number of his works were included in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) that opened in Munich on 19th July 1937. As a result, a great portion of his oeuvre was confiscated and later destroyed or dispersed abroad. In 1937, Heckel took refuge in Carinthia and when his Berlin studio was bombed in 1944, he moved to Hemmenhofen where he spent his last years mainly working on landscapes. Heckel eventually died in Radolfzell in 1970.
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