Heckel, Erich

Heckel, Erich (1883–1970). German painter and printmaker, born in Döbeln, Saxony. In 1904 he began studying architecture in Dresden, and in 1905, with three of his fellow students, he founded Die Brücke. He gave up his architectural course soon afterwards, but supported himself by working in an architect's office until 1907, when he became a full-time artist. His work was somewhat more lyrical than that of other members of Die Brücke and he showed a special concern for depicting sickness and inner anguish (Convalescent Woman, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard, 1913). His landscapes, too, sometimes have a decorative quality foreign to most German Expressionism. In 1911 he moved to Berlin, where he had his first one-man exhibition in 1913 (Die Brücke now having broken up), at Fritz Gurlitt's gallery. Heckel was classified unfit for active service in the First World War, but he volunteered to work as a medical orderly in Flanders. His unit was commanded by an art historian, Walter Kaesbach (1879–1961), and through him Heckel met Beckmann and Ensor, who influenced his work; it became more melancholic and tragic, his landscapes expressing the agony of war throught conflict of the elements. After the war his painting lost much of its intensity, with pastel tones replacing the bold, sometimes harsh colours he had earlier used. In 1937 his work was declared degenerate by the Nazis and in 1944 his Berlin studio was destroyed in an air raid. Heckel then moved to Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance. From 1949 until his retirement in 1955 he taught at the Karlsruhe Academy.

Apart from Kirchner, Heckel was the most prolific printmaker among the Brücke artists, producing more than 400 woodcuts, about 400 lithographs, and nearly 200 etchings, mainly in the period 1903–23. George Heard Hamilton regards his prints as ‘a better measure of his talents than his paintings, in which his technique is often hesitant'.