BERLIN (AP) — Seventeen iconic paintings by German expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are going on display at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof museum.

The exhibit opening Friday also features photographs Kirchner took during his years in Davos, Switzerland and a number of drawings that include some of his fellow artist Max Liebermann.

Curator Joachim Jaeger said Tuesday that the show is titled "Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Hieroglyphs" because the artist sometimes depicted figures, buildings and landscapes as abstract motifs that are comparable to a system of signs, or hieroglyphs.

Born in 1880, Kirchner was a founder of the famous expressionist artists' group Die Bruecke.

The exhibit, which runs through February 26, 2017, is accompanied by two contemporary works, one by New York-based artist Rudolf Stingel and one by Italian Rosa Barba.