I pretended to study architecture – The unknown Kirchner

I pretended to study architecture – The unknown Kirchner

Exhibition at the Kirchner Museum Davos: June 9th to September 22nd, 2024

“I then went to Munich where I pretended to study architecture, just as I had in Dresden, because my parents were against painting.”
This is how Kirchner describes his professional training in a letter to Botho Graef in 1916. A short sentence in an otherwise extensive description of his career and the influences that made him an avant-garde painter. For Kirchner, it seems, studying architecture was little more than a necessary compulsion, but one that did not leave much of a mark on the development of his work. Many of his architectural drawings from his years of study and his diploma thesis have survived to this day. The exhibition aims to bring this unknown side of the painter into focus and use the designs and sketches to highlight Kirchner’s architectural perspective.