Self-Portrait as a Soldier, or Selbstbildnis als Soldat, is an Expressionist oil-on-canvas painting by the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

[3] Critical interpretations of the painting attribute its stark Expressionist style and myriad of symbolic elements to the socio-political turbulence of Germany during the First World War.

Self Portrait as a Soldier may be viewed as testimony to Kirchner's volatile mental and physical health and as a critique of the chaotic instability of Germany during the early 20th century.

The Allen Memorial Art Museum cites that the "soldier has an elongated face and other blurred features, while the woman's shoulders are disproportionate to that of a true human form.

The impetus for Germany's involvement in WW1 was its alliance with Austria-Hungary who declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

[13] Ultimately, Britain's naval blockade against Germany established to restrict the supply of food, oil and weaponry from 1914 to 1915 caused "deliberate starvation of citizens", disease and death amounting to comprehensive reduction of socio-cultural and political stability.

The mental and physical health of soldiers was further jeopardised by the squalor of trenches where corpses, rats, poisonous water, freezing cold temperatures, disease and malnutrition were common.

Subsequently, he suffered from "war neurosis and depression" which fuelled drug and alcohol addictions leading to severely diminished health in the years following 1915.

Critical interpretation of the work stresses how these colour choices drain the soldier's face of vitality which emphasise his weakness and despondency.

[25] The careful selection and amalgamation of visual and symbolic features in Self Portrait as a Soldier can be read as Kirchner's ultimate condemnation of military conscription.

[26] The Allen Memorial Art Museum propound that Kirchner's exaggerated depiction of the severe psychological and physical consequences of military service underlie an "unshakeable, almost pathological fear of the effects of war on himself as an artists and human being".

[27] Similarly, Claudia Siebrecht divulges that "through his art, Kirchner revealed himself to the world as a man crippled by the experience of war, and as someone whose pre-war existence and masculine self-had been eradicated.

[33] 'Self-Portrait as a Soldier' also exhibits Primitivist influence, notably through Kirchner's androgynous naked female figure and the use of thin, sharp outlines to emphasise the "sketchy abstraction, mask-like rigidity and stark stylisation" of form.

"[36] With regards to the presentation and preservation of the work, AMAM's catalogue states that "the original plain-weave canvas was line, re-stretched on an ICA-type spring stretcher, and coated with a synthetic varnish in 1956".

"[38] Ultimately, AMAM cites that "minor in-painting and fills at the corners and along the top edge" of the artwork are the only significant signs of deterioration.

[44] Kirchner's Self-Portrait was retitled "Soldier with Whore" and exhibited alongside 650 works which were said to underpin "society's moral decay and [the] eroding [of] traditional family values".