File:Female Ancestor Figure, Mali, Brücke-Museum Berlin, 64968, view a.jpg

The estate of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, owned by the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation at the Brücke Museum, contains his collection of around 100 sculptures and objects with colonial backgrounds. The Brücke artist himself never travelled outside Europe and, to the best of current knowledge, bought these objects in the art trade and from private owners from the 1910s onwards. The collection includes ritual and everyday objects, alongside souvenirs for the Western market. The way they were perceived underwent changes: they came to be seen as objects of art and decoration. Little is known of their origins, the circumstances of their acquisition, or the historical and current importance of the objects. Most of them originate from Germany’s former colonies, thus referring directly to German Expressionists’ entanglements in the often unlawful appropriation of material culture in colonially occupied lands. More