Self-Portrait at the Easel, Painting by Ludwig Meidner

Die Pathetiker as Artistic Defiance

In November 1912, Meidner took part in a joint exhibition at Herwarth Walden’s gallery Der Sturm alongside Jakob Steinhardt and Richard Janthur. The three artists styled themselves as Die Pathetiker (The Men of Pathos) and, as the writer Kurt Pinthus recalled, flew the banner of a “new pathos:”

“through one fiery outburst of hyperbolic expression, they [sought] to blow open outmoded forms in art and society […] in order to create something that was new and, we believed, better, forged by hearts with faith in the future and an ‘industrious spirit’.” 

Meidner’s life and work were both shaped by the connection between artistic, social, and religious upheaval. He evolved from an anarchist revolutionary into a religious mystic and eventually became a strictly observant Jew, creating paintings on biblical themes.

Meidner’s Self-Portraits 

Meidner’s many self-portraits expressed his ongoing self-interrogation as an artist. He experimented in these works with a variety of roles and points of reference, presenting himself in turns as indecisive, demonic, or brash. In Self-Portrait at the Easel, he gazes at the viewer with confidence. 

The composition follows the conventions of an artist’s portrait, showing Ludwig Meidner in the act of painting. Nevertheless, the work clearly departs from studied precedent. Its expressive painterly gestures, with vigorous brushstrokes, angular and exaggerated shapes, and intense, even garish colors, give the painting a dynamic restlessness. Even while engaging with this traditional genre of portraiture, Meidner’s expressive formal language clearly transgresses its usual boundaries.