Kummeralp Mountain and Two Sheds

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "Kummeralp Mountain and Two Sheds" (1920) is an oil and encaustic on canvas depicting the Alpine landscape near Davos, Switzerland, where Kirchner lived after his move from Germany. Kirchner (1880–1938) was a founding member of Die Brücke (The Bridge), the German Expressionist movement that revolutionized early 20th-century art. After a mental breakdown during World War I, Kirchner settled in Davos, where the mountain landscape became his primary subject. This painting shows the Kummeralp mountain with two small sheds in the foreground, the rugged Alpine forms rendered with Kirchner's characteristic angular, expressive style. The combination of oil and encaustic (pigmented wax) creates a rich, textured surface. The palette is characteristically Expressionist—perhaps intense blues, greens, and yellows that capture the vivid light of the high Alps. The mountain is not represented naturalistically but transformed through the artist's emotional response, its forms exaggerated and distorted to convey its monumental presence.

Kirchner's Swiss landscapes represent the culmination of German Expressionism, the intensity of the movement's early urban subjects transferred to the dramatic forms of the Alpine landscape.

This mountain landscape captures Kirchner's Expressionist vision, the angular forms and intense colors transforming the Alpine scene into a vision of nature's monumental power and spiritual presence.