Erich Heckel was born on July 31, 1893 in Doblen, near Dresden, Germany.
As a young boy, Heckel became friends with Karl Schmidt
(later Schmidt-Rottluff) while he was in school in Chemnitz. In 1904,
Heckel began studying under Fritz Schumacher at the Technische Hochschule
in Dresden. While in Dresden, Heckel met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz
Bleyl. In 1905, the three artists plus Schmidt-Rottluff formed the
Expressionist group, Die Brucke.
Upon the group’s creation, Heckel continued working for the architect,
Wilhelm Kreis, until 1907, although he stopped his other creative pursuits
in architecture. Heckel became the binding member in Die Brucke.
He kept the group together during their arguments and he used his studio
as their business center, where he made contracts and set up the
exhibition schedule. He also took part in the groups communal drawing
sessions. He spent summers between 1905 and 1911 on the Moritzburg lakes
drawing with the other members.
Heckel’s artwork in particularly noteworthy even when removed from the
group’s surroundings. His woodcuts showed emphasis on flatness and
simplification of forms. A shining example of Heckel’s woodcuts is
Reclining Women. He also used his talent for woodcutting to make the
group’s business cards and invitations to events.
As Die Brucke moved from Dresden to Berlin, the artists’ styles involved
with the group changed as well. Gone were the harsh complementary
colours traded for milder colours and a more graphic representation by the artists. This change can be seen in Heckel’s, Canal
in Berlin. This change can be seen in Heckel's Canal in Berlin. This time period in Heckel’s life also brought some of his
most important works. He painted, Two Men at Table, inspired by Fyodor
Dostoyovsky’s The Idiot, a triptych entitled, Convalescence of a Woman,
and the painting, Glory Days. These images show Heckel’s use of symbolic
figures in his paintings, whereas his other Brucke friends used models
and landscapes as their predominate images.
During World War I, Heckel volunteered and was sent to work at a medical
unit run by the art historian, Walter Kaesbach, in Belgium. Many other
artists, including Max Beckmann, served in this post as well. While in
Belgium, Heckel became a co-founder of the Arbeitsrat fur kunst and
joined the Novembergruppe for a time. The Angermuseum in Erfurt
commissioned his mural, Stages of Existence, while the museum was under
the direction of Kaesbach in 1922.
When the Nazis held power in Germany, Heckel underwent persecution and
restrictions on his artwork. In 1937, it was labeled as “degenerate
art,” and Heckel was not allowed to pursue anything artistic, at least
openly. In 1941, Heckel left Berlin for Carinthia, yet when he returned
in 1944, he discovered that the bombing of Berlin had destroyed his
studio and its contents. He packed up what was left of his studio and
moved to Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance. He started teaching at the
Kunstakademie in Karlsrube in 1949 and continued teaching there until
1955, when he retired. His later pieces enveloped his style of painting
while in Die Brucke, but also included more traditional aspects of art.
This new style of painting gave his later works a calmer feeling. Erich
Heckel died on January 27, 1970 in Radolfzell, near Konstanz,
Germany.
