Couple in Room, Nude Man with Woman (1915–16): Art, History and Details

Couple in Room, Nude Man with Woman (1915–16) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880–1938).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The man in this image resembles one of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s close friends, Hugo Biallowons, who was killed in World War I shortly after this print was made. Kirchner depicted the man in a cramped space next to a nude woman who reaches for him without making eye contact. The yellow paper suggests artificial light. Kirchner owned one large lithographic stone, from which he made one lithograph after another simply by sanding down the stone, and then starting again with a new composition. This resulted in very small editions. By spreading water mixed with turpentine over the surface of the stone to loosen the lithographic crayon, he created unexpected and spontaneous results, seen here in the grainy and broken lines.

Object facts

• Title: Couple in Room, Nude Man with Woman
• Date: 1915–16
• Creator attribution: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880–1938)
• Culture: Germany, 20th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: Lithograph on yellow paper
• Dimensions: Image: 59.5 x 50.5 cm (23 7/16 x 19 7/8 in.); Sheet: 71.1 x 57.4 cm (28 x 22 5/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1991.24

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Glaubinger, Jane. "Notable Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147.
• Glaubinger, Jane, "Twentieth-Century Revolution", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 41 no. 10, December 2001
• Peters, Emily J. “Graphic Discontent: The German Expressionists strove for spontaneity and unexpected results.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 58. no. 1 (January/February 2018): Cover, 5-7, 22.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.