Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) was a master of Expressionism. Comprising some 160 works, this exhibition examines the young artist’s groundbreaking creative phase in Berlin from 1911 to 1917. It focuses on the dichotomy between his twin lives in the bustling capital city and on the tranquil Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn, where he spent his summers from 1912 to 1914. The contrasts between these two places of inspiration could hardly be greater, yet the works from that period bear witness to Kirchner’s quest for a new, primal form of expression and for a life that doesn't conform to the bourgeois norms of the age. The outbreak of World War I plunged Kirchner into a psychological and physical crisis in 1915. He only gradually emerged from it in 1917, when he settled in the Swiss mountains near Davos and embarked on a new phase of creativity.