Verblühte Tulpen 1914

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this painting, "Verblühte Tulpen", with oils, using expressive brushstrokes and a palette of yellow, blue, and pink, to create a feeling of melancholic beauty. Imagine Kirchner in his studio, layering the paint, letting the colors vibrate against each other. Yellow as a background, a vase, and as the light that bleeds across the whole scene. See how he applies it in short, choppy strokes, building up a surface that feels both raw and luminous? The blues and greens create a sense of depth, while the pinks soften the overall effect, like a memory of something sweet, now fading. The flowers, rendered in a mix of blue and pink, have a drooping quality, as if they’re succumbing to gravity, to time. I see Kirchner's earlier expressionist works here and the influence of artists like Matisse, yet Kirchner’s painting has a distinct emotional charge. It’s a conversation between seeing and feeling, between the immediacy of the gesture and the weight of experience.