Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Street Life in Dresden,” lithograph on heavy cream Japan paper, 1908
Who: Eric Fischl and Jane Kallir
What: Discussion about the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the evolution of drawing over the last century
Where: Galerie St. Etienne, 24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-245-6734
When: Wednesday, May 18, free, 6:30
Why: “Ecstatic drawing is the foundation of the new art,” German Expressionist painter and Die Brücke cofounder Ernst Ludwig Kirchner said in 1919. On May 18, New York City native and painter and sculptor Eric Fischl will be at Galerie St. Etienne in Midtown to discuss “The Art of Drawing” with gallery owner Jane Kallir, held in conjunction with the exhibition “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Featuring Watercolors and Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection,” which continues through July 1. The exhibition comprises more than fifty pen-and-ink drawings, woodcuts, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs by Kirchner, who committed suicide in 1938 at the age of fifty-eight, shortly after the Nazis detained or destroyed more than six hundred of his works. “Just as he preferred moving models, Kirchner himself moved as he drew, changing position or walking through town with a sketchbook in hand. He drew every day and nearly everywhere he went, filling at least 180 sketchbooks, over 12,000 sheets,” Kallir writes in her extensive exhibition essay. “Drawing is the key to Kirchner’s art, and his sketches are the key to his drawings. But the sketches should not be viewed as studies per se. Rather, the sketches birthed new forms, conceived in the throes of ‘ecstatic’ experience, that ‘crystallized and hardened’ in subsequent pictures.” Fischl, whose work includes such series as “Art Fair,” “Corrida in Ronda,” “The Travel of Romance,” “Ten Breaths,” and “The Bed, the Chair . . .” in addition to the MTA mosaic “The Garden of Circus Delights” in Penn Station, will lend insight into his own creative process as well. Free advance reservations are not required but recommended and can be made here.