This early and important erotic woodcut of a couple on a divan embodies the aims of the Brücke group, of which Erich Heckel was co-founder with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl in 1905. Looking for simplicity and a rawer, more authentic humanity in art, Heckel and his peers wanted to express themselves in a way that was powerful and immediate, for which the medium of the humble woodcut was ideally suited. The resistance of the wood as a material drove Heckel towards a reduction of lines and shapes, visible in the present work with its strong black contours and intense flat red for the background, which would ultimately come to define the art of the Brücke. It is this precedence which led Reidemeister to declare: `Nothing is as much Brücke as a woodcut’ (L. Reidemeister, ed., Erich Heckel–Der frühe Holzschnitt, exh. cat., Brücke-Museum, Berlin, 1983, p. 7).

Ebner and Gabelmann were aware only four impressions of this woodcut printed in red and black, excluding this example, which was not known to them (they cite a further five printed in blue and black). This fine impression belonged to the German industrialist and patron of the arts Dr. Josef Esters. Ester's famously commissioned the renowned modernist architect Mies van der Rohe to build his country house, Haus Esters, in Krefeld.