Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) was a German expressionist painter who, with his classmates, founded the art association Die Brücke. Kirchner studied architecture in Dresden and painting in Munich. His work was strongly influenced by Edward Munch. In his paintings, he captures raw human emotion and for his position, he was considered an exile. For his paintings, he used mainly prostitutes as models, whom he captured in various nudes, for example Interior Nude or Three Women taking a Bath. During the war, he was discharged from service due to a mental breakdown. During his stay in nursing homes in Frankfurt and in Davos, his soul calmed down. However, he cultivated a drug addiction to sleeping aids, morphine and alcohol. When he was almost recovered, the fascists, with the onset of their power, seized six hundred of his paintings and declared him a perverted artist. He was not allowed to exhibit, which for him was the end. He destroyed many of his woodcuts and works and on June 15th, 1938 shot himself outside his house in Frankfurt. His paintings are highly prized today and can be seen, for example, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.