Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is considered to be one of the most talented and influential German Expressionists painter and print maker. Kirchner was encouraged, by his parents, to begin studying architecture at the Dresden Technical High School in 1901. While attending his classes, he met his soon-to-be good friend, Fritz Bleyl, who was also a German Expressionist artist and they both shared the same views on art and nature. During Kirchner's time at school, he decided to switch his studies from architecture and focused specifically on fine art. In 1905 he formed an artist group, named Die Brücke (or "The Bridge"), with a couple other architect students. Their group refrained from the traditional academic styles and created their own unique style. Die Brücke would express extreme emotion through crude lines and a vibrant, unnatural color palette.
At the time that Kirchner had completed this painting, the society was unstable and Germany was "encroaching on war". Subject matter of this painting are female prostitutes, who Kirchner chose, to represent a self-portrait of himself as "an outcast of society". The colors have been described as being "powerful, acidic, and exaggerated" and the composition is tight and barely contains negative space. Materials used for this painting was oil on a 47 3/8 x 36 3/4 in. canvas.
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