ART REVIEW : INITIAL EXHIBITION PAIRS GERMAN EXPRESSIONISTS

More than an art show of graphic clout and emotional fervor, “Prints by Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff: A Centenary Celebration” is a beginning. The exhibition of 82 woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, dry points and illustrated books, at the County Museum of Art (through Sept. 15), is the first of about 60 presentations planned at the museum from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies.

Rifkind recently gave his celebrated collection of German Expressionist graphics to the museum and established a study center there, to be relocated in the new construction. Now in temporary quarters, the center already functions as a magnet for scholars; the exhibition program is a way of keeping the collection alive and available to the public. If the remaining 59 shows are as captivating as the first, we are in for a satisfying relationship.

The “centenary” actually arrives a year late for Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) and two years late for Heckel (1883-1970), but no matter. The occasion is only an excuse to investigate the work of two founders of Die Brucke (The Bridge group of German Expressionists, formed in Dresden in 1905 and disbanded in Berlin in 1913). Fellow students in high school and college, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff later shared models and studio space as they brought new life to printmaking.

The two artists drifted apart after serving in World War I, but even while they worked together there’s no confusing their output. Heckel has a lighter, more sensitive touch; his lines are like nerve ends, all exposed and quivering. Schmidt-Rottluff wields a heavier hand, chopping out massive forms in woodcuts that have the force of primitive sculpture.

The vitality of both bodies of prints puts to shame most of the Neo-Expressionism that emulates it. The two artists cut to the quick of unsettling emotions during a period when civilization seemed to be disintegrating. They used meager means to reveal the most base forms of behavior, along with raw passion and tenderness.

Heckel’s exhibit encompasses relatively gay circus images, quietly touching cityscapes, wickedly erotic images of a nymphet, a tortured self-portrait and a rare set of illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol.” As he follows Wilde’s tale of a man who kills his wife’s lover, gets sent to prison and is finally executed, Heckel conveys a range of feeling that would seem impossible in such a recalcitrant medium. His lines shudder, crackle and wrench the gut as they soar beyond simple illustration.

That Expressionism is not a style but an attitude may be obscured by this exhibition, which concentrates on bold woodcuts and searing visions. The occasional softness of lithography, which allowed artists to draw instead of cut, and the itchy line of Heckel’s dry point, “Lunatic at the Table,” provide a counterpoint to the graphic drama of printed woodblocks.

No one was more at home with the high contrast of stark black-and-white prints than Schmidt-Rottluff, and he never used it more incisively than in his 1918 portfolio “Nine Woodcuts,” illustrating the life of Christ. The complete series is displayed here, culminating in “Christ and Judas,” a blazingly succinct image of betrayal.

Schmidt-Rottluff’s work can have the obsessive edge of missionary zeal, but it also can exhibit an easy familiarity with female anatomy and a marvelous range in portraiture. The unforgettable faces currently shown include everything from a monumental “Mother” and an austere “Large Prophetess” to a faceted visage of a debonair man, who turns out to be W. R. Valentiner, first director of the County Museum of Art (in the days when it was lodged in Exposition Park).

Affordable and readable catalogues are an integral part of the projected exhibitions program. The first one is both; it’s available in the museum bookshop for $3.