His study visit at the Academy in Munich in 1904 and the museums he visited there coined him just as his trips to Berlin and stays on the island of Fehmarn, as well as later stays in Bohemia with Otto Mueller. But before he moved to Berlin in the fall of 1911, Kirchner spent most of his days in Dresden. Based on an early focus on the colors and brushstrokes of the Neo-Impressionists and Van Gogh's painting, Kirchner's town- and landscape show the tendency to depict the sensations triggered by what is seen - both in terms of form and with regard to the choice of color. Short, nervous brushstrokes and the use of pure, bright colors result in an exaggeration of the motif. The previously very small, multi-colored brushstrokes now gave way to a more flat painting style, he sets strong color accents in monochrome surfaces in a contrasting manner. A new prevailing mood not only in Kirchner's art. In reaction to the color storms of the Fauves, he also exaggerates the natural color, as it is the case here in this depiction of Emy.
Summer 1908 with Emy on Fehmarn
Hans Frisch, the five years childhood friend of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner since the school days in Chemnitz, worked at the Dresden Ethnological Museum in 1905. He is a young man with a wide range of interests, paints with the "Brücke" artists, writes poetry and even becomes a passive member of the group. Kirchner also knows his sister Emy, the later photographer Emy Leonie Frisch, from their school days in Chemnitz. In 1892 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's father was appointed professor at the Technical Institute and Trade Academy in Chemnitz; where the family, originally from Aschaffenburg, relocated. After the first friendly episodes with the model friends Line and Isabella, Emy not only became Kirchners model but also his partner. Depictions of her can be found in the first sketchbooks, in 1908 the artist etched an almost full-sheet self-portrait with pipe with a standing nude in background that appears like a bodily thought, that must be Emy. In company of Hans Frisch Kirchner and his muse visited the island of Fehmarn for the first time. They found accommodation in a farmhouse in the town of Burg; many sketches and paintings were made during the stay and document the exploration of the island. For our gouache, an India ink work made in preparation of the painting “Frauenbildnis in weißem Kleid (Emy Frisch)“ is important. It shows her wearing a white dress and a straw hat in front of bushes and reed that allow a view onto the open sea. A man wearing a hat can be seen in background, probably her brother Hans. While the line in Kirchner's drawings is already firm and poised, he is still experimenting somewhere between Impressionism and Pointillism, creating a summery, light-flooded atmosphere with short, almost clearly delimited strokes. On Fehmarn Kirchner also painted this bright and glowing gouache "Emy Frisch mit großem Hut“ in bold colors. Emy sits in front of a purple-red fabric that cannot be identified any closer, wearing a bright red blouse and blue skirt, leaning slightly to the right, propped up on her right forearm. Her face is sun-tanned and she wears a broad-brimmed straw hat, slightly tucked backwards and revealing her hair that softly falls over her forehead. Kirchner lets a yellow hat band waft in the blue of the sky and underlines the airiness of a harmonizing dynamic in the clearly set accents of the color mix or the color juxtaposition, respectively: It is a cheerful picture of a relaxed encounter with a desirable woman, his model.
After the stay on Fehmarn, the connection to Emy deteriorated. They sometimes meet in Berlin, postcards to Erich Heckel attest to encounters, Kirchner sees Emy Frisch several times. On November 27, 1909, he attended the opening of the XIX. Exhibition “Zeichnende Künste” of the Berlin Secession, where he showed works together with Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He briefly reports to Erich Heckel about his plans to buy a house in Dangast and adds: "Emy seems to be against it" (quote from: Gerd Presler, EL Kirchner, sSeine Frauen, seine Modelle, seine Bilder, München/New York 1998, p. 10.). Kirchner noticed how Emy was attracted by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, whose wife she later became. That was an almost unbearable experience for Kirchner.
On the back of this unique enamored homage to Emy Frisch we discover an event that Kirchner captured a while later, in 1910, in his Dresden studio at Berliner Straße 80, where he moved at the beginning of the year. In doing so, he emotionally banished the portrait from 1908, so to speak, without destroying it or even painting over it, which wouldn’t have been very unlikely. Two naked models stand and sit in front of a screen painted by Kirchner with a blue border around a greenish inner field on which the artist placed figures and animals as well as silhouette-like hieroglyphic ornaments. The standing nude can be doubtlessly identified as Fränzi (Marzella?) braiding her hair and putting her characteristic ribbon at the end of it. The gaze from her pronounced face, with a broad forehead and a pointed chin, probably fixes Kirchner, who sits across from the action. The second model crouches on a folding chair with a high backrest. Who is the model with the legs bent, sitting sideways on the chair and looking somewhat indifferently into the room? Is that Marzella? The older sister of Lina Franziska (Fränzi) Fehrmann, who, according to latest research, never existed in Dresden? Who is the 12-year-old friend of Fränzi and her older sister, about whom Kirchner wrote in a letter to Heckel in April 1910 in which he also mentioned Marzella: “Everything’s fine here now. Marzella has made herself at home and is developing fine traits. We have become very close, we lie on the carpet and play.” Are the friend and her older sister artists, too. Perhaps members of the Sarrasani Circus, which had a guest performance in Dresden?
Marzella is Fränzi and Fränzi is Marzella
More recent research on the models question older findings and opens up a discussion as to whether representations of “Fränzi” could also be of “Marcella”. “It is also not certain whether these are really depictions of Fränzi. For example, the girl Marzella, also a childlike model, is often depicted with the same hairstyle, the ribbons in her hair and the same tapering face.” This would also help to explain a confusion of the names “Fränzi ”and “Marzella”for identical pictures by the "Brücke" artists. (https://www.wikiwand.com/de/Lina_Franziska_Fehrmann#/Einzelnachweise)
Kirchner painted the presumably most famous portrait of “Marzella” in his studio in 1910, it shows the very iconographic details that point to Fränzi: the face with the pointed chin and her hair ribbon. No matter how quickly or, as it is the case here, concentrated, he sketched face and ribbon: For Kirchner, Fränzi is - it seems - Marzella: she can always be identified.
In what probably is the most important publication by the "Brücke" artists for the exhibition in Dresden's Galerie Arnold in 1910, Heckel made a woodcut based on Kirchner's painting, which was exhibited there for the first time and was listed under number 25 in the list of Kirchner's exhibited works: “Marzella [Akt]"! In this exhibition Kirchner presented another painting with a young model and titled it "Artistin", today it is on display at the Brücke-Museum, Berlin. Could it be the seated model on the folding chair in this drawing? Probably yes. Kirchner reports to Heckel about a 12-year-old friend of Fränzi and her older sister aged 15. Are they the child artists from Sarrasani circus?
Regardless of who takes on the 'supporting role' alongside Fränzi, Kirchner knows how to create a monumental studio scene with his rapid drawing style, in which the models naturally linger and stimulate Kirchner to graphic peak performances. Kirchner's works on paper show impatience, they appear torn, but at the same time a line, an arc, connects the motif again. Kirchner's works on paper are eruptive - eruptive like an earthquake, and they are erotic. His works show vulnerability and sadness, they show sensitivity, they embody a lot of affection. Kirchner's works on paper reflect his life, the places of his excessive life. One of these places, or rather the stage for Kirchner's work, is his first simple studio in Dresden: “So I moved into an abandoned butcher's shop in the proletarian quarter of Dresden with a few boxes, a cot and my tools. Despite the poverty, this soon became the meeting place for the girls who lived around in the area and so I had the best models and friends with whom I went to Moritzburg to paint outdoors ”. He decorated his studio, a shop at Berliner Straße 60, with tie-dyed curtains and screens with depictions of 'barbaric' lovers, built his own furniture, carved dishes and accessories. Time and again they form a decorative background for studio scenes. [MvL]