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Lot Essay
The Baltic coastline was a frequent protagonist in the work of Pechstein, who returned to its shores throughout his lifetime seeking solace from the anxiety of the industrial metropolis. He was particularly captivated by the Prussian fishing village of Nidden, tucked along the Curonian Spit in present day Lithuania, as well as its resident population of laboring fishermen. Painted in 1920 during the artist’s fifthand perhaps most productive, sojourn to the rural enclave, Fischer celebrates the sheer expressive force of nature upon man.
On the heels of World War I, Pechstein dedicated himself and his art to the radical, burgeoning political movements in Berlin. By 1919, disillusioned by the possibility of material social change, he had taken refuge in the countryside and the tenets of Expressionism, namely a return to nature. He was again drawn to Nidden and its local fishermen, whose honest living offered a refreshing symbiosis between man and nature otherwise absent from the socio-political turmoil of the city. It was there, in 1920, that he consecrated his reverence in his Fischerleben series of paintings, which quietly depict the quotidian activities of the village’s fishing population. Many works from this series lost or destroyed during World War II—allowing for study only from black and white archival images. One such work is of particular note, Landende Boote, whose composition included six fisherman, and is closely related to Fischer.
In contrast, Fischer, painted the same year, presents a more immediate and emotive Expressionist scene. The lone fisherman braces for impact as the swelling waves and impastoed sea spray rise to meet his wooden vessel. His awestruck cry and hollowed visage endow the scene with palpable mortal despair, a nod to the influence of Edvard Munch and his Scream. In response to the fisherman’s anguish, the painted world surges with electric greens and cadmium reds, indicative of the expressive coloration for which Pechstein was revered. The critic Paul Fechter wrote: "The purest example and the strongest representative of extensive Expressionism is Max Pechstein. He not only maintains a relation to the world, but intensifies it to the highest possible degree only just attainable by him" (Der Expressionismus, Munich, 1920, p. 83). This is true of the present scene, which teems with heightened intensity. Behind the fisherman, waves mount to reveal only the scant sliver of a bloodshot horizon, a faint suggestion of what ill-fate perhaps awaits. And yet, in the ever-present face of death, Pechstein’s noble fisherman grips his sword-like oar in preparation for battle against the awesome power of nature.
On the heels of World War I, Pechstein dedicated himself and his art to the radical, burgeoning political movements in Berlin. By 1919, disillusioned by the possibility of material social change, he had taken refuge in the countryside and the tenets of Expressionism, namely a return to nature. He was again drawn to Nidden and its local fishermen, whose honest living offered a refreshing symbiosis between man and nature otherwise absent from the socio-political turmoil of the city. It was there, in 1920, that he consecrated his reverence in his Fischerleben series of paintings, which quietly depict the quotidian activities of the village’s fishing population. Many works from this series lost or destroyed during World War II—allowing for study only from black and white archival images. One such work is of particular note, Landende Boote, whose composition included six fisherman, and is closely related to Fischer.
In contrast, Fischer, painted the same year, presents a more immediate and emotive Expressionist scene. The lone fisherman braces for impact as the swelling waves and impastoed sea spray rise to meet his wooden vessel. His awestruck cry and hollowed visage endow the scene with palpable mortal despair, a nod to the influence of Edvard Munch and his Scream. In response to the fisherman’s anguish, the painted world surges with electric greens and cadmium reds, indicative of the expressive coloration for which Pechstein was revered. The critic Paul Fechter wrote: "The purest example and the strongest representative of extensive Expressionism is Max Pechstein. He not only maintains a relation to the world, but intensifies it to the highest possible degree only just attainable by him" (Der Expressionismus, Munich, 1920, p. 83). This is true of the present scene, which teems with heightened intensity. Behind the fisherman, waves mount to reveal only the scant sliver of a bloodshot horizon, a faint suggestion of what ill-fate perhaps awaits. And yet, in the ever-present face of death, Pechstein’s noble fisherman grips his sword-like oar in preparation for battle against the awesome power of nature.