Step right up! Circus, dance and nightlife

In 1911, Heckel moved to Berlin, followed after a short time by Kirchner and Pechstein. The glamorous lifestyle, the variety clubs, the brothels and the ‘dodgy’ nightspots, where the sexual conventions of the time were called into question, fascinated many representatives of Expressionism.

Through Heckel’s wife Sidi Rida, Kirchner met the dancer Gerda Schilling and her sister Erna Schilling, who modelled for him from then on, for example for the dynamic drawing ‘Belly Dancer’, which shows Gerda Schilling.

One of the main works in the mpk’s graphic arts collection is the powerful and luminous watercolour ‘Penne’ by Otto Dix, created in 1923. The sheet, executed in watercolours and pencil, transports us to the demi-monde of a brothel. At the centre of the picture is a partially naked woman clinging to a drunken man from behind. She represents a ‘penne’, an outdated term for a prostitute.