One of the four founding members of the German Expressionist artists’ group Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) in Dresden, Schmidt-Rottluff created several carved and painted sculptures and decorative objects, in addition to paintings, drawings, and prints. The artist’s second solo exhibition at Hamburg’s Galerie Commeter in fall 1911 was dedicated to fifteen of his intimate carved, incised, and painted wooden boxes, most of which he had made during his summer stay in the northern seaside town of Dangast.
Schmidt-Rottluff’s boxes demonstrate Die Brücke artists’ experiments with handicrafts, as they transformed their studio/living environments through objects, both practical and decorative, of their own making. Schmidt-Rottluff’s early boxes rarely feature hinges, resulting in an uninterrupted decorative program that runs its course across all sides of the boxes with equanimity–as in Wooden Box, the only Schmidt-Rottluff box in a US museum collection. Here, undulating incised lines rhythmically follow the same trajectory on the sides and separate each surface into monochromatically painted zones. At the center of this small object, an ultramarine blue provides an electrifying contrast to the otherwise earthy hues of the box. Its bright yellow interior reminds the viewer that this object was meant to be handled and seen from all sides, with or without the lid; accordingly, many of Schmidt-Rottluff’s boxes served a quotidian purpose at the hands of their early owners, such as housing postcards or jewelry.