Wrestlers in a Circus (1909): Art, History and Details

Wrestlers in a Circus (1909) 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:

Locked in a dangerous embrace, beefy wrestlers writhe on a brightly colored mat. Famous for his scenes of urban life, Kirchner uses loose brushstrokes to capture the blur of bodies in motion. Imagine watching this intense match, surrounded by screaming spectators.

Object facts

• Title: Wrestlers in a Circus
• Date: 1909
• Creator attribution: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880–1938)
• Culture: Germany, 20th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 107.5 x 121 x 7 cm (42 5/16 x 47 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 80.5 x 94 cm (31 11/16 x 37 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1966.49

A detail from the museum

During the 1930s, 639 works by Kirchner were removed from German museums and either destroyed or sold to foreign collectors and museums. The year after the Nazis organized the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, Kirchner committed suicide.

Collection credit

Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art and Bequest of William R. Valentiner

Further reading listed by the museum

• Schmalenbach, Werner, and René Wehrli. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880-1938. Zürich: Kunsthaus Zürich, 1952.
• Gordon, Donald E. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.
• Wolfgang Henze, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 7, 2015, in CMA curatorial file.

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.