Material Oil on canvas
Dimensions 120 × 90.5 cm
Place of Creation Davos, Switzerland
Price Available upon inquiry
Status Vetted

About the Work

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Bauer einen Schubkarren ziehend (Peasant Pulling a Wheelbarrow)


We are proud to present Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Bauer einen Schubkarren ziehend” as the centerpiece of our TEFAF 2026 presentation, marking the 80th anniversary of our gallery’s founding. The painting holds a distinguished place in our own history — it appeared on the cover of “Der Spiegel”, behind our founder and patron Roman Norbert Ketterer, who established the gallery in 1946.

This significant work is an early and powerful example of Kirchner’s so-called “New Style”, a pivotal phase currently celebrated in major museum exhibitions such as “Kirchner x Kirchner”at the Kunstmuseum Bern and “Kirchner. Picasso” at the LWL Museum in Münster.


1925/26, Kirchner painted the painting in the early forms of his then newly emerging ‘New Style’, in which the colour surfaces calmed down, they became more homogeneous and were captured by intertwined, alternating concave and convex lines, so that broad rounded forms alternated in strong colour contrasts, creating a monumental painting. After 1930, Kirchner covered these areas of colour with parallel hatching in line with his late art theory. These hatches mostly run diagonally from the bottom left to the top right, counteracting and balancing the counter-diagonal line that dominates the composition.


What you can see is a Davos mountain farmer pulling a wheelbarrow up a slope to the left. His bent figure dominates the painting. The slope in the lower left-hand section is already green and covered with purple crocuses, while in the background the landscape and trees are still covered with snow. The vigorous and powerful movement of the farmer with his wheelbarrow from the bottom right contrasts with the counter-movement of a horse behind him, which is carefully dancing its way down from the top left to the bottom right between patches of snow.


The painting bears Kirchner’s incised monogram in the upper right corner and is stamped on the reverse (upper left) with “E.L. Kirchner Nachlass” (E.L. Kirchner Estate) and inscribed KN-Da/Bc 36 in black brush pen. The verso reveals the earlier, abandoned composition Forest Landscape (1914, Gordon 806v), enriching this masterwork’s art-historical significance and recalling the expressive intensity of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s formative Brücke years.

Show moreless

Provenance

Artist's studio, Davos (until Ernst Ludwig Kirchners death in 1938); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's widow Erna Kirchner (until her death in 1945); Kirchner estate from 1945 (from 1946 to 1954 on deposit at the Kunstmuseum Basel, from 1954 at the Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer); Wolfgang Ketterer Gallery, Munich (1985); Private Collection, Southern Germany; Private Collection, Switzerland.

Literature

Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig: Photoalbum (Photos outside Albums I-IV), fig. 806¹.; Gordon, Donald E., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. With a critical catalogue of all paintings, Munich/Cambridge (Mass.), 1968, p. 391, cat. no. 806, fig. p. 391.; 1956, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in memory of the artist's 75th birthday, Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein, cat. 35, dated ‘around 1935’; 1985, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Campione d'Italia, Roman Norbert Ketterer & Galerie Henze, cat. 16, ill. p. 35, (colour plate); 1985, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Munich, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, cat. 16, ill. p. 35, (colour plate); 2004, Munch, Nolde, Beckmann... Private Art Treasures from Southern Germany, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, cat. 67, ill. p. 55, colour plate 37; 2008, The Unexpected New: Late Work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Galerie Michael Werner, cat. 9, (colour plate); 2016, BRÜCKE and the Reform of Life, Bernried, Buchheim Museum, cat. 114, ill. p. 145, colour plate; 2017, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos, Cecina, Fondazione Hermann Geiger, ill. p. 19, colour ill.; 2021, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the Sublimity of the Mountains, Lugano, Fondazione Gabriele Anna Braglia, cat. 35, ill. pp. 112, 113, photograph / colour plate.

View artwork at TEFAF Maastricht 2026

View Full Floorplan