Street Underpass
1913
Medium
drypoint in black on buff wove paper
Dimensions
plate: 17 x 20 cm (6 11/16 x 7 7/8 in.) sheet: 23.2 x 34.2 cm (9 1/8 x 13 7/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
Accession Number
2012.92.271
Art Historical Context
Erich Heckel's *Street Underpass* (1913) captures the raw energy of urban Berlin through the lens of German Expressionism. As a founding member of Dieücke (The Bridge), a radical group formed in Dresden in 1905, Heckel rejected academic traditions in favor of bold, emotional distortions that conveyed the alienation and vitality of modern life. This drypoint print reflects the group's shift to Berlin around 1911, where artists like Heckel embraced the city's gritty underpasses, factories, and crowds as symbols of industrialization's double-edged sword—progress laced with isolation. The medium ...
About the Artist
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel (1883–1970) was born in Döbeln, Saxony, the son of a railway engineer. He attended the Realgymnasium in Chemnitz and went on to study architecture in Dresden, where he encountered the fellow students who would become his closest artistic collaborators. In 1905, together with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl, Heckel co-founded Die Brücke — The Bridge — an E...