Five women stand like dark birds in a narrow urban space. Their bodies are sharp, their faces masklike, their hats extravagant. The group is elegant and predatory, vulnerable and severe. Kirchner turns fashion into armor and the street into a psychological stage.

Oil on canvas with angular silhouettes, acid color, and compressed arrangement. Forms are stylized almost to the point of abstraction.

The women represent modern femininity filtered through male anxiety, spectacle, and commerce.

Urban nightlife and prostitution became charged subjects in German modern art before World War I.

The painting influenced later images of the modern city as theatrical and estranging.