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Lot Essay
In the 1920s, as before the war, Pechstein was widely regarded in the public eye to be the leading exponent of expressionist painting in Germany. In 1922, Pechstein had become a member of the Preussische Akademie der Künste and a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. This period was one of relative stability for Pechstein and he achieved great social and economic success. The artistic experiments that Pechstein had begun in 1909, during his first trip to Nidden, and then subsequently during summers spent at Moritzburg with his fellow Brücke artists, could now find their natural progression in the 1920s, as his harsh, Expressionist palette was gradually replaced with a softer aesthetic.
Around 1922, Pechstein executed a series of dramatic colourist landscapes in Leba in East Pommerania. Had it not been for the new division of boundaries in post-war Europe, Pechstein would certainly have moved permanently to his beloved Nidden. Instead, Nidden had now been deemed part of Lithuania and so Pechstein was forced to look for a new paradise to paint. On discovering Leba, in what is now Poland, Pechstein decided to settle there. The Leba landscapes share with the present work an extraordinarily vibrant colour range and sense of contrast that also recalls his celebrated South Sea pictures executed in Palau. Seeming to combine the recedents set by both Cézanne and Matisse in the field of still-life painting, Pechstein, has arranged the work almost solely in accordance with these colour contrasts, placing a striped blue table-cloth on a red table against a powerful blue background. With an assortment of rich colourful fruit arranged in the bowl and across the table and a small sculpture reminiscent of his trips to Palau, the artist imbues this serene still-life with an intensity and sense of exoticism that sets it apart from many of his still-lives of the period.
In 1922 Max Osborn described the paintings Pechstein executed in Leba with words that could equally apply to his still-lives: 'He wants to capture the pulsating brightness, the interweaving of the blinding light and the wonderful clear air, or the filtering effect that occurs through the humid atmospheric veil. It evokes an Impressionist theme, but the execution is entirely different. There is nothing analysed, nothing dissolved into a maze of details... The whole series of Leba pictures allows us to observe a new development. The colourful expression has kept its layered flatness, but it is richer, and more lively in its structure' (M. Osborn, Max Pechstein, Berlin, 1922).
Around 1922, Pechstein executed a series of dramatic colourist landscapes in Leba in East Pommerania. Had it not been for the new division of boundaries in post-war Europe, Pechstein would certainly have moved permanently to his beloved Nidden. Instead, Nidden had now been deemed part of Lithuania and so Pechstein was forced to look for a new paradise to paint. On discovering Leba, in what is now Poland, Pechstein decided to settle there. The Leba landscapes share with the present work an extraordinarily vibrant colour range and sense of contrast that also recalls his celebrated South Sea pictures executed in Palau. Seeming to combine the recedents set by both Cézanne and Matisse in the field of still-life painting, Pechstein, has arranged the work almost solely in accordance with these colour contrasts, placing a striped blue table-cloth on a red table against a powerful blue background. With an assortment of rich colourful fruit arranged in the bowl and across the table and a small sculpture reminiscent of his trips to Palau, the artist imbues this serene still-life with an intensity and sense of exoticism that sets it apart from many of his still-lives of the period.
In 1922 Max Osborn described the paintings Pechstein executed in Leba with words that could equally apply to his still-lives: 'He wants to capture the pulsating brightness, the interweaving of the blinding light and the wonderful clear air, or the filtering effect that occurs through the humid atmospheric veil. It evokes an Impressionist theme, but the execution is entirely different. There is nothing analysed, nothing dissolved into a maze of details... The whole series of Leba pictures allows us to observe a new development. The colourful expression has kept its layered flatness, but it is richer, and more lively in its structure' (M. Osborn, Max Pechstein, Berlin, 1922).