"Fränzi stehend" is, without doubt, one of the artist's most important color woodcuts, in a balanced color scheme of black, green, and red, showing the most famous and most frequently depicted model of Heckel, Kirchner, and Pechstein. Erich Heckel sketched the standing young Fränzi in his new studio on Falkenbrücke 2a in Dresden, which he had just set up in late October or early November of 1910. In the background, we see a wall covering that had just been made for the new studio. It shows a hilly landscape with characteristic pine trees, a creative exploration of the "Etruscan art" the artist had encountered on his trip through Italy in 1909. Heckel also used this drawing with its eye-catching background for the woodcut "Fränzi stehend" in black, red, and green, first published in the artists' group's annual publication. This 1911 edition was dedicated to Heckel.

The unique character of this woodcut is in the innovative printing technique: before staining, the designated areas for the colors were sawn out of the wooden block, stained separately, and then reassembled for printing. This way Heckel made sure that the printed colors did not overlap at the edges, and he attained this unprecedented brilliance and two-dimensional purity. The work shows Franziska Fehrmann (1900-1950), known as Fränzi. She was about 10 years old when the men of the Brücke discovered the child and hired her as their model. In 1945/46, Max Pechstein recalls impressed: "When we were together in Berlin [1909], Heckel, Kirchner, and I decided to work on the lakes around Moritzburg near Dresden [..] When I arrived in Dresden and stayed in the old shop in Friedrichstadt, we discussed how to realize our plan. We had to find two or three people who were not professional models and could therefore guarantee us gestures that had not been trained in studios and at academies. I remembered my old friend, the janitor at the Academy [..] He referred us to the wife of a deceased artist and her two daughters. I explained to her our sincere artistic intentions. She visited us at our place in Friedrichstadt, and since she found a familiar environment, she agreed to her daughters accompanying us to Moritzburg [..] We lived in absolute harmony, worked, and bathed. If we were short of a male model, one of the three of us would jump in. Now and then the mother, the fearful hen, would show up to make sure that nothing bad had happened to her ducklings swimming on the pond of life." (Max Hermann Pechstein, Erinnerungen, edited by Leopold Reidemeister, Wiesbaden 1960, pp. 41-43.)

There are so many that Fränzi and her sister Marcella were even honored with an entire exhibition. (Der Blick auf Fränzi und Marcella, Zwei Modelle der Brücke-Künstler Heckel, Kirchner und Pechstein, ed. by Norbert Nobis, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2010) Fränzi achieved something extraordinary with her presence alone: she managed to get the inner "Brücke" circle - except Schmidt-Rottluff, who was staying in Dangast around that time - to work together. Their perspectives of the motifs from the Moritzburg ponds and the Dresden studios resembled each other and continued to live on in their paintings, making her an inimitable icon of the true "Brücke" style around 1910. The woodcut “Fränzi stehend” is one of the most beautiful, indeed iconic sheets of the Dresden “Brücke”. [MvL]

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The "Brücke": Expressionism on Paper – The Passion of a German Collector
The Hessian collector recollects his first encounter with Expressionist art to this day: it was shortly after the end of World War II that he was struck by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff paintings on a visit to the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett. The gallery was one of the first in Germany to offer art lovers an opportunity to see works by the artists of the "Brücke" group again, as they had been ostracized as "degenerate" by the Nazis. One of the main reasons behind Hanna Bekker von Rath's decision to open the place on Börsenplatz in Frankfurt in 1947 was to provide a forum for these artists after the dark years of Nazi rule and to reintroduce them to the public. “These works blew me away” is how the collector recalls his initial reaction to the exhibits. He liked Schmidt-Rottluff's rugged, woodcut-like style and subsequently also developed a liking for the other members of the “Brücke”, whose style was so different from what had previously been considered “beautiful”. Together with his wife – who was particularly interested in the works of Otto Mueller and Emil Nolde – he visited many more exhibitions at the Frankfurt Kunstkabinett and other galleries.

Nevertheless, it was about more than just admiring them. In 1962, the couple bought their first Expressionist work at auction in Stuttgart – from Roman Norbert Ketterer, the uncle of the current owner of Ketterer Kunst: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's woodcut "Drei Akte im Wald" from 1933 marked the beginning of the couple's extensive collection of "Brücke" prints.

He never had a specific system, says the collector. However, he avoided acquiring pieces that “many others had as well”. He was particularly interested in works produced in small numbers, pieces with a unique feature such as an additional coat of paint, or works that the artist used as trial proofs. But first and foremost, says the collector, “I made my purchases based on my taste”