Georg Baselitz (*1938 Germany)
1938 Georg Kern was born in Deutschbaselitz in Germany.
1956 Moved to East Berlin, study of painting at the University of Art with professor Womacka and professor Behrens-Hanger.
1957-64 After two semesters Baselitz was expelled from the university because of his "sociopolitical immaturity”. Study of painting at the University of Art in Berlin-West with Professor Hann Trier.
1961 Changed his name into Baselitz following his place of birth.
1969 Painted his motifs upside down, which helped him to achieve a breakthrough and makes his works unmistakable to date.
1972 Participation in "documenta 5" in Kassel.
1978 Professorship at Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe.
1980s Several professorships, participation in Biennale in Venezia and documenta 7 in Kassel. Received numerous awards.
1995 Diane Waldman organized the first great retrospective in the U.S. in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. After New York, the exhibition was shown in Los Angeles in the Country Museum of Arts, in Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Washington D.C. and in the National Gallery in Berlin.
1998 Developed large-scaled works "Friedrichs Frau am Abgrund" and "Friedrichs Melancholie" for the Reichstag in Berlin.
1999 Great retrospective of "Monumentale Druckgraphik 1977-1999" (“Monumental graphic artworks”) in the Musée Rath, Geneva.
2005 Started the "remix"-series, on which he will be working for many years.
2009 Lived and worked in Ammersee (Bavaria) and in Imperia (Italian Riviera).
2010 Exhibition: Baselitz - 50 years of painting, 30 years of sculpture, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Museum Frieder Burda Baden-Baden (in cooperation).
2018 Exhibition on the occasion of his 80th birthday at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. At the same time the Kunstmuseum Basel is showing works on paper.
Georg Baselitz lives and works in Basel, Salzburg, at Lake Ammersee and in Imperia.


Max Beckmann (Germany 1884 – 1950 US)
1884 Born in Leipzig as a son of an estate agent and a flour trader.
1900-1903 Study at the conservative art school Großherzogliche Kunstschule in Weimar.
1905 Moved to Berlin, where he became part of the artist group Berliner Secession.
1913 Paul Cassirer organized the first large Beckmann retrospective with 47 paintings. Beckmann leaves the Berliner Secession and joined the Freie Secession.
1914 At the beginning of the First World War, Beckmann volunteered for the medical service in Flanders. He created drawings and etchings in which he described his impressions of the war. One year later he was discharged from military service after a mental breakdown, which he suffered due to his experiences in the military hospitals.
1919 Rejected an appointment to the Weimar School of Art (the later Bauhaus).
1929-1932 Lived in Paris from September to May each year.
1931 Beckmann was increasingly attacked by the National Socialists.
1937 The National Socialists defamed Beckmann as a "degenerate artist" and confiscated 509 of his works from German museums. Together with his wife he emigrated to Paris and later to Amsterdam.
1940 After the invasion of German troops into the Netherlands, Beckmann burned his diaries kept since 1925.
1947 Moved to the United States, where he took on a guest-professorship at Washington University Art School (St. Louis).
1948 Extensive Beckmann retrospective at the City Art Museum (St. Louis), which afterwards was shown in Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Cambridge/Massachusetts.
1949 Beckmann taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (New York).
1950 Max Beckmann died in New York.
 

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Erich Heckel (1883 – 1970 Germany)
1883 Born in Döbeln, Germany.
1901 Begin of the friendship with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
1904 Begin of the studies of architecture in Dresden, where he met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl.
1905 Brake off his architecture studies. Establishment of the artist group „Brücke“.
1906 Met Max Pechstein and convinced him to join the "Brücke".
1910 During a Berlin journey he met Otto Mueller who joined the "Brücke" the same year.
1911 Move of the "Brücke"-Artists to Berlin. City-life and circus became his new subjects.
1912 Met Lyonel Feininger and Franz Marc and August Macke, members of the artist group "Blauer Reiter".
1913 Official break of the "Brücke".
1915 Married with the dancer Sida Riha.
1915-1918 During the First World War he was volunteer for the red cross.
1918 Came back to Berlin. Exhibition with the "Novembergruppe" and membership in the "Arbeitsrat für Kunst".

Since 1920 Several journeys through Europe.
1937 Defamation as "degenerate artist".
1944 A bomb attack destroyed his studio in Berlin and most of the work stored there. Moved to Hemmenhofen (Bodensee).
1949-1955 Teacher at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Karlsruhe.
1970 Erich Heckel died in Radolfzell (Bodensee).

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Germany 1880 – 1938 Switzerland)
1880 Born in Aschaffenburg.
1901-1905 Studied architecture in Dresden and pictorial art in Munich.
1905 Founded the artist group „Brücke“ in Dresden together with Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
1910 Became member of Neue Secession Berlin. Got to know Otto Mueller who became member of “Brücke”.
1911 Moved to Berlin; founded the MUIM Institute together with Max Pechstein.
1912 Intense exchange between “Brücke” and “Blauer Reiter”.
1913 His work was exhibited in the Armory Show, New York; first solo shows in Germany; dissolution of the „Brücke“ group.
1915 In the heat of the outbreak of the First World War he joined the army and was later discharged because of a physical collapse.
1916 Stays in numerous sanatoria in Berlin and Königstein.
1917 Settled in Frauenkirch, near Davos, Switzerland. Kirchner suffered from paralysis of his limbs and disturbances of consciousness, during this time he mainly produced prints and drawings. His health improves rapidly in the new surroundings.
1919 Besides his paintings and drawings Kirchner again produced furniture, relief doors and free sculptural works.
1920 Major exhibitions in Germany. First article by Kirchner on his own work, published under the pseudonym Louis de Marsalle. The art-writing alter ego serves the "objective" representation of Kirchner's artistic development. In his diary he made detailed notes on his
own role in the history of modern Art.
1923 The couple Schiefler visited Kirchner for six weeks, as Gustav Schiefler has published the first catalogue raisonné of Kirchner's graphic works.
1927 In Kirchner's work the abstracting form reductions and the area-related colour setting became more dominant. The artist is increasingly concerned with contemporary painting theories, the results of which he incorporates into the "New Style", as he himself called the change in his painting style.
1929 The nudes in the outdoor environment became his dominant pictorial motif.
1934 Got to know Paul Klee.
1937 The Nazis included his work in the exhibition „Entartete Kunst“, so-called „degenerate art“, more than 600 of his works were confiscated from German museums.
1938 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner died by his own hand in Davos-Frauenkirch.

 

Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956 Germany)
1867 Hans Emil Hansen was born in Nolde (Schleswig), Germany, as a son of a farmer.
1884-88 Apprenticeship as a carver and furniture designer in Flensburg. Year of travel to Munich and Karlsruhe, where he visited evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule.
1889 Worked in a furniture workshop in Berlin.
1892-97 Teaching activity at the Kunstgewerbeschule St. Gallen. He developed first landscapes in watercolour and drawings of personified mountains, some of them are published in the magazine “Jugend” (“Youth”). This success made it possible for him to work as a freelance painter.
1898 Visited a private painting-school in Munich and Dessau, after Franz von Stuck refused his admission in the Academy of Munich.
1901 Moved to Berlin. Became member of the association „Berliner Secession“.
1902 Marriage to the actress Ada Vilstru and change of his name into “Nolde”.
1903 Summer vacation on the isle Alsen. Intensification of the colours in his artworks.
1906 Exhibition in the Gallery Arnold in Dresden. Here he got to know the artists of "Brücke". One of them is Karl Schmidt-Rottluffs, who appealed to Nolde to affiliate to the group. Nolde was part of it for one year.
1909 Moved to Ruttebüll (Schleswig). He developed religious artworks.
1911 The association "Berliner Secession" is refusing the work of Nolde. Suspension from the association. Entry in the “Neue Secession”.
1912 Participation on the second exhibition of „Blauer Reiter“ in Munich.
1913-14 Expedition to the isle Palau, over Sibiria, China and Japan.
1926 Moved to Seebühl (Nordfriesland).
1937 Defamed as a degenerate artist. 1052 artworks from the German Museums got removed. 29 paintings are shown in the exhibition „Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art“).
1944 Destruction of his studio in Berlin. Loss of numerous graphic works.
1946 Appointment as professor by the government of Schleswig-Holstein. Ada Nolde died.
1948 Marriage to Jolanthe Erdmann
1956 Emil Nolde died in Neukirchen, Germany.

 

Hermann Max Pechstein (1881 – 1955 Germany)
1881 Born as son of a factory worker in Zwickau.
1898 Start of an apprenticeship as a decorative painter.
1900 Visit of Staatlichen Kunstgewerbeschule (the State School of Arts and Crafts).
1902 He became a master student at the Dresden Academy of Art.
1906 Acquaintance with Erich Heckel, Pechstein joined the artist group "Die Brücke" in May.
1907 Stay in Paris. Relations with the "Fauves" („The Savages“).
1908 Moved to Berlin, became a member of "Berliner Secession".
1910 Co-founder of "Neue Secession".
1911 Foundation of MUIM institute with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
1914-15 Journey through Europe, further on via Hong Kong to the Palau Islands (South Sea), which belong to the colonies of the German Reich. At the beginning of the First World War, the Japanese occupied the colony; Pechstein flew to Manila. He returned to Berlin via New York and Amsterdam. There he immediately reported for military service.
1918 Together with Erich Mendelsohn and Rudolf Belling, Pechstein was co-founder of the artists' association "Novembergruppe", which was politically committed to the November Revolution and wanted to take over its impulses into the field of art.
1923 Was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and received a professorship.
1928-33 Stays in Italy, France and Switzerland.
1933 He was dismissed from the teaching profession and was forbidden to paint.
1937 Expulsion from the Prussian Academy of Arts. National Socialists defame Pechstein's works as "degenerate art", one of his works is shown in the exhibition "Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”).
1939-45 He alternated between Berlin, Leba and Koser See and retired to Pomerania during the last years of the war.
1945 Return to Berlin, appointment to the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.
1952 Award of the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
1955 Hermann Max Pechstein died in West-Berlin.

 

Karl Schmidt-Rottfluff (1884 – 1976 Germany)
1884 Karl Schmidt was born in Rottluff/Chemnitz as the son of a miller. Already at school he made friends with Erich Heckel.
1905 Study of architecture at the Sächsische Technische Hochschule in Dresden, where he met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl. Together with them he founded the artists' association "Die Brücke". As a free lance artist he added the name of his birthplace Rottluff to his real name Schmidt.
1906 Summer stay on Alsen with Emil Nolde, who joined the "Brücke" for a short time on Schmidt-Rottluff's effort.
1910 Schmidt-Rottluff joined the "Neue Secession" with the other members and participates of “Brücke” in its exhibitions for some time.
1911 He met Lyonel Feininger and Otto Müller, moved to Berlin, but continued to paint mainly landscapes and still lifes. His style is based on the interaction of strong, unbroken colours.
1912 Under the influence of the work of Pablo Picasso, cubist elements and forms find their expression in his works.
1913 "Die Brücke" is officially disbanded.
1915-18 After the beginning of the First World War, Schmidt-Rottluff did his military service with an armoured battalion in northern Russia. He returned to Berlin, where he became a member of the "Arbeitsrat für Kunst", which saw itself as an anti-academy of German artists.
1930 Spent some time in Rome as a study guest of the German Academy at the Villa Massimo. Acquaintance with Alexej von Jawlensky.
1931 He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts.
1933 The National Socialists defamed his works as "degenerate art". He was expelled from the Academy.
1936-37 Prohibition to exhibit. 608 of his works are confiscated from German museums. 25 of his works are shown in the exhibition "Entartete Kunst" (“Degenerate Art”).
1941 Prohibition to paint.
1943-46 After the bombing and destruction of his Berlin studio and most of the work in it, he retired to Rottluff.
1946 Appointment as President of the "Cultural Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany".
1947 Was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. During this time he began to work on large-format watercolours for which Schmidt-Rottluff is known.
1967 The Brücke Museum in Berlin is opened on his initiative.
1976 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff died in Berlin.