Self-Portrait: Bearded Man

Self-portraiture was a central concern of the German Expressionists. Erich Heckel, one of the four founders of the Brücke group, often depicted himself in paintings, drawings, and prints. This work shows a quiet man, perhaps shocked and saddened, as Heckel truly was from his wartime experience. The backdrop is an attic studio he had decorated by painting figures on the slanted walls. Among Heckel’s drawings, this portrait is unusually large with respect to the size of the sheet and the scale of the head. It appears to be a rehearsal for a major mural on the theme of Lebensstufen (stages of life), which Heckel executed in the early 1920s in the Angermuseum in Erfurt. Generally regarded as the most important surviving German Expressionist wall painting, the mural is Heckel’s largest extant project.