Street, Dresden

1908, reworked 1919; dated on painting 1907

Oil on canvas, 150.5 × 200.4 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Women in wide hats crowd a busy shopping street, passing one another without contact. The scene turns the big-city crowd into a picture of isolation.

The setting is the Königstrasse in Dresden, with a trolley closing off the back.
Look at the pink pavement: it tilts steeply upward, and there are almost no buildings.
Acid greens and oranges outline the figures in place of shading.
Faces turn into masks and the ground seems to slide under the walkers, so the street feels unsteady rather than simply busy. In a letter he wrote of strange faces surfacing here and there as points of interest in the throng.
It stayed with the artist until his death in 1938; the museum bought it in 1951.