Along with Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a founding member of 'Die Brücke'. His inclination to retreat to the unspoiled landscapes of the North and Baltic Sea marked Schmidt-Rottluff's personality as an artist and made him a loner. During his time in Berlin, geometric shapes became important; with his two-dimensional manner of painting, the simplification of motifs and the radiant colours that he used, he fully devoted his style of painting to the vocabulary of Expressionism. From 1912 on, Schmidt-Rottluff maintained a fertile artistic dialogue with Lyonel Feininger, whom he had met while taking part in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. After 'Die Brücke' disbanded in 1913, Schmidt-Rottluff developed a monumental and stylised vocabulary of form. When his works were defamed as 'degenerate', he withdrew to inward emigration in Eastern Pomerania and Rottluff. Only his appointment as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in 1947 rehabilitated his reputation, and he went on to receive numerous honours and exhibitions later in his life. His artistic estate was incorporated in the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation in the Brücke-Museum in Berlin.
