At Dinner


by Katrina Schulz

16 images


“We were delighted and tucked in immediately since we were very hungry,” wrote Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, thanking his Brücke colleague Erich Heckel for sending him a food parcel in December 1909. The quote highlights the precarious situation in which Kirchner found himself at that point in time.

Heckel’s support is likewise reminiscent of the fact that food, in the sense of provisions, is also always closely associated with care and conviviality. Hence, Brücke-Museum’s collection includes numerous pieces that show social coexistence (both in the city and the country) centred around the theme of eating and drinking. The food often seems merely an accessory at first, yet at second glance it seems to emerge as the veritable engine behind the situation. In addition, there are a lot of still lifes that put food firmly at the centre of the pictorial arrangement. Here, Erich Heckel’s painting Dead Chickens draws attention once again to an entirely new category of cuisine in art: The slaughtered chickens lined up for further processing point to the preparation of food as a trade.

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