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Lot Essay
In 1912, the twenty-five year-old Macke saw the pivotal Italian Futurist exhibition organized by Herwarth Walden at Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. The impact of this exhibition on the German avant-garde and Der Blaue Reiter in particular was phenomenal. The young Germans were confronted by paintings which were quintessentially different to the more conformist impressionist pictures of Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth, and even more explosive than the Dangast pictures of Die Brücke. Here were complex, intellectual pictures filled with radiant lines, color, movement and a completely new language of two dimensional space. Notable Futurist pictures in the Sturm exhibition included Umberto Boccioni's Visioni Simultanea (Balla, no. 423), in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover, and Carlo Carrá's I Funerali Dell'Anarchico Galli (C. 8 11) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Shortly afterwards, in late 1912, Macke and Franz Marc visited Robert Delaunay in Paris. Delaunay's work was already familiar to them as were his avant-garde theories regarding pictorial composition and the new language of "Orphism." From the Futurists Macke and Marc learned the importance of dramatic light effects and the way to convey movement in two-dimensions.
In the present work, Macke adapted his painting method to accommodate the subtleties of painting in watercolor, devising a feathering technique of applying paint which at once gave extraordinary surface and subtlety to the sheet. Moreover, as we see here in Gartencafé, he began to use a combination of hot and very pure colors to fill his works with strong contrasts and a radiance surpassing even the bravest experiments of Delaunay. On the 4th August 1914 the First World War broke out and Macke was drafted into the German army. On the 26th September he fell at Perthe-les-Hurles in Champagne, leaving the works of the summer of 1914 as his last major series of paintings.
The present watercolor was the final study for a tapestry that was created for the collector Bernhard Köhler, whose niece, Elisabeth, was married to Macke.
In the present work, Macke adapted his painting method to accommodate the subtleties of painting in watercolor, devising a feathering technique of applying paint which at once gave extraordinary surface and subtlety to the sheet. Moreover, as we see here in Gartencafé, he began to use a combination of hot and very pure colors to fill his works with strong contrasts and a radiance surpassing even the bravest experiments of Delaunay. On the 4th August 1914 the First World War broke out and Macke was drafted into the German army. On the 26th September he fell at Perthe-les-Hurles in Champagne, leaving the works of the summer of 1914 as his last major series of paintings.
The present watercolor was the final study for a tapestry that was created for the collector Bernhard Köhler, whose niece, Elisabeth, was married to Macke.