Oil on canvas.121 x 148 cm.
The work is shown in the artist's photo album I (photo 171). [CH].

• Spectacular rediscovery: hidden in a German private collection for 80 years.
• Whereabouts and colors hitherto unknown: The work was only documented by the artist's black-and-white photographs.
• Three photos show the painting in Kirchner's house "In den Lärchen" in Davos.
• Shortly after its creation, it was part of the seminal "Brücke" exhibition at Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin (1912), the first and ultimately only "Brücke" group show in Berlin.
• Exceptionally large painting from the "Brücke" heyday.
• Iconic painting of a key subject in Kirchner's oeuvre: dance, circus and cabaret.
• As a pictorial account of a nightlife scene at a time of social upheaval, "Tanz im Varieté" embodies the essence of life in the modern city just as much as the famous Berlin street scenes that Kirchner created as of 1913.
The work is documented in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern. Export of the work from Germany will be possible. We are grateful to Dr. Tessa Rosebrock, Kunstmuseum Basel, for her kind expert advice. We are grateful to the heirs of Max Glaeser for the kind support in conducting the research.
LITERATURE: Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Mit einem kritischen Katalog sämtlicher Gemälde, Munich/Cambridge (Mass.) 1968, no. 196 (titled "Steptanz", illu. in black and white, p. 302). - - Karl Scheffler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in: Kunst und Künstler. Illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, no. XVIII/5, issue 5, 1920, p. 219 (illustrated in black and white, p. 219). Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Postkarten und Briefe an Erich Heckel im Altonaer Museum in Hamburg, Cologne 1984, p. 252 (with the title “Steptanz”, illu. in b/w). Johanna Brade, Die Zirkus- und Variétébilder der "Brücke (1905-1913): Zwischen Bildexperiment und Gesellschaftskritik. Zu Themenwahl und Motivgestaltung (PhD thesis), Berlin 1993, cat. no. 75. Roland Scotti (ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Das fotografische Werk, Wabern/Bern 2005, p. 118. Lothar Grisebach (ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch, Ostfildern 1997, p. 339 (photograph). Hans Delfs (ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Der Gesamte Briefwechsel ("Die absolute Wahrheit, so wie ich sie fühle"), Zürich 2010, no. 1193 and 1440 (mismatched). Thorsten Sadowsky (ed.), ex. cat. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Der Künstler als Fotograf, Kirchner Museum Davos, November 22, 2015 - May 1, 2016, pp. 44, 66, 76, 82 and 150 (photographs). Thorsten Sadowsky (edg.), Louis de Marsalle. Visite à Davos, Heidelberg 2018 (illustrated in black and white, p. 11, no. 2). Thorsten Sadowsky, 'Und der Bauchtanz ging den ganzen Vormittag'. Ernst Ludwig Kirchners Davoser Tänze, in: KirchnerHAUS Aschaffenburg / Brigitte Schad (ed.), ex. cat. Kirchners Kosmos: Der Tanz, KirchnerHAUS Aschaffenburg, Munich 2018, p. 41 (titled "Stepptanz", illustrated in black and white, p. 42, no. 4). ARCHIVE MATERIAL: Künzig, Dr. Brunner, Dr. Koehler Attorneys at Law, Mannheim (administration of the Glaeser estate): Offer of paintings from the Max Glaeser Collection, 1931, Archive of the Kunstmuseum Basel, shelfmark F 001.024.010.000: “Varietészene”. Galerie Buck, Mannheim: Offer of paintings by Arnold Böcklin, Lovis Corinth, Anselm Feuerbach, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Hans von Marées, Edvard Munch, Heinrich von Zügel, Max Glaeser Collection, 1932, Archive of the Kunstmuseum Basel, shelfmark F 001.025.002.000: “Variete” (sic). Düsseldorf Municipal Archives, inventory: 0-1-4 Düsseldorf Municipal Administration from 1933-2000 (old: inventory IV), offers and purchases, sign 3769.0000, fol. 175-177. Estate of Donald E. Gordon, University of Pittsburgh, Gordon Papers, Series 1, Subseries 1, Box 1, Folder 197.
If he had lived later, he probably would have painted the magic dancer Michael Jackson, too. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner loved the circus and cabaret shows, visited Gret Palucca’s and Mary Wigman’s studios and learned about Josefine Baker's "Revue Nègre" guest performance in Berlin, and was fascinated with dance, with gifted bodies Körpern and black models. He invited the circus artists Milly and Sam to his Dresden studio, where they drank, dressed up, and practiced ragtime. His notebooks are full of swift scribbles and dance poses. These ecstatic accounts of movement would sometimes inspire his paintings years later, among them paintings such as "Russische Tänzerin", "Tanzpaar" and "Totentanz der Mary Wigman" - all three of them icons of Modernism. The painting has been considered lost for 100 years. Its reappearance is a sensation The painting "Tanz im Varieté" is a document of the fascination that dance exerted on Kirchner. However, it had been waiting for its entrance on the stage behind the curtain of art history for almost 100 years. Kirchner made - as far as we know - three photos of the painting. The first shot documents an exhibition of the “Brücke“ painters at the Berlin gallery of Fritz Gurlitt in the spring of 1912 (fig.). The camera guides the view through a monumental portal flanked by two wooden Kirchner sculptures on the right and left side and puts full focus on the large "Tanzszene" right in the middle of the venue’s end wall. A later photograph shows a jolly scene in the "Haus in den Lärchen" in Davos (fig.). A dancing farmers couple, the painter on the left, seemingly impassive, the painting "Tanz im Varieté" behind him, unframed, negligently mounted on the wall, partially covered by a reclining chair. The photo with the self-portrait dates from 1919. The third shot was made at the request of the art critic Karl Scheffler; it was published alongside a Scheffler essay on Kirchner’s nervous, highly intuitive working method in the art magazine "Kunst und Künstler". The last time that "Tanz im Varieté" was on public display was in an exhibition at Paul Cassirer in Berlin in late 1923. Shortly after, the painting disappeared from the scene. Its reappearance is a real sensation. Modernity was born on the stages and in the streets What do we see in the painting? Kirchner described the latest trend in major European cities around 1900, something that would cause real hype on dance floors. In the cone of the spotlight in the foreground, we see a cakewalk scene between a black dancer and a white dancer, surrounded by a group of other performers. Kirchner fills the body contours with colored areas. A dense palette of red and pink hues dominates. The contrast between dark and light skin is highlighted. A variety show setting can be seen in the background. Pastel green ornaments on a balustrade and a row of palm trees suggest a winter garden. "Tanz im Varieté" is characterized by an opulent charm. It is an homage to the Golden Age of entertainers, who sent audiences into ecstasy with their show dances before the First World War. The painting is one of the last works on the theme of the circus and cabaret that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made in Dresden before he put increasing focus on the theater in the streets of Berlin. Modernity was born on the stages and in the streets. The combination of dignity and elegance, the refinement of fashion, and the precision of accelerated dance movements lent people in the first decades of the 20th century an aura of status and aloofness. Hardly anyone perceived the cosmopolitan flair and the sophisticated coldness as subtly as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He had no use for the motionless academy nudes and sought inspiration in encounters with people instead. Concepts of physicality, gender roles, and cultures of motion were redefined on the capital's streets and squares, in its dance halls and theaters. A social and cultural revolution that Kirchner rendered in drawings and paintings. His pictures are descriptions of the present and sensitize the viewer to the imbalance of his figures in a striking manner. They express the unpr