A Pioneer of Expressionist Emotion: The Life and Art of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, born Karl Schmidt in 1884 in the small German town of Rottenflut (later Rottluff), stands as a monumental figure in the tumultuous world of early 20th-century art. His adoption of “Schmidt-Rottluff” in 1906 was more than a simple name change; it was an assertion of identity, a grounding in the very landscape that would so profoundly in…