Two Girls in a Garden

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a founding member of Brücke (Bridge). Formed in 1905 in Dresden, the group sought to forge an art that would be a bridge to Germany’s great artistic past. Brücke renounced academic painting and promoted a more intuitive approach that drew on non-Western and outsider sources. The intentionally rough and angular style of Two Girls in a Garden demonstrates Schmidt-Rottluff’s interest in African sculpture, which he studied in the Dresden Ethnographic Museum. To combat the devolution of modern society, the members of Brücke praised nature and frequently communed together in the countryside. Though by 1914 Schmidt-Rottluff had moved to Berlin, nature would remain an important source of inspiration in his art.