Stadtlandschaft mit zwei Straßenbahnen 1909 - 1911

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this city landscape with trams using watercolor and charcoal, and you can tell he was working fast. There’s a real urgency to the marks. The paper is bare in many places, and the washes of color are thin, but they give you everything you need. Look at the building on the left, all blocky, rectangular and angular. It’s like a stage set – a kind of backdrop for the trams and figures in the foreground. He was interested in the way modern life was changing how people saw the world, and how the business of city life changed human interaction. The black marks of the charcoal are loose and free, they don’t quite meet with the edges of the buildings and trams, the dark marks vibrate against the paper. Think about the Fauves, or even the later work of someone like Philip Guston. Kirchner’s work is a part of an ongoing conversation in painting, where clarity is less important than feeling.