Advanced Search. Home Buy. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Lot description Essay Lot description Bergdorf mit rosa Kuh. Oil on canvas. Gordon Verso inscribed "Nachlass E. Ever since family-owned. Kirchner: Letters to Nele, Munich , p. In search of relief from his acute depression, Kirchner visited Davos a second time in early May , where he was under medical treatment with the respiratory physician Spengler and his wife Helene. Late June that year Kirchner rented the Ruesch hut on Stafelalp high above Frauenkirch where he sought to find cure through disciplined work, but crippling legs and hands impaired the desired result; however, Kirchner was still able to show a selection of new woodcuts.
Late August Kirchner got a visit from Henry van de Velde, at whose advice he went into treatment with the psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger at his sanatorium "Bellevue" in Kreuzlingen in September. After he was released in July Kirchner returned to the Stafelalp. Slowly adapting to his new surroundings he became intensively occupied with his again. Accordingly, Kirchner furnished and rearranged the house according to his taste and habits.
On July 5, he wrote to van de Velde: "I am really happy to be and to stay here. On good days I can do a little work and spent my days in peace and quiet among these simple and good people. In this solitude I have fought myself back onto a path that will help me to survive despite the suffering.
My days of the circus, the loose women and the society circles are over [. Kirchner began to keep his [Davos] diary and returned to the Stafelalp for the summer; numerous graphic works and paintings came into existence, among them this sunlit "Bergdorf mit rosa Kuh". Davoser Tagebuch, Ostfildern-Ruit , p. The adjustment was hard, "to weave the immediate life into a carpet without any artistic stylization and yet to capture all of life.
I have to try over and over again. I start out with color fields and add the drawing later, the same way my last Berlin pictures also worked out. But I have to make far more drawings, just as I did back then.
