Hermann Max Pechstein

Galerie Gurlitt, Berlin
Kaethe Pintus, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Konrad Lemmer, Max Pechstein und der Beginn des Expressionismus, Leipzig, 1949, illustrated (titled Morgen auf Nidden)
Aya Soika, Max Pechstein: Das Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde, Munich, 2011, vol. II, no. 1919/38, illustrated p. 146

Like his fellow German Expressionist painters as well as their French counterparts, Pechstein sought to flee the frenzy of a city life, and sought a more peaceful, ‘primitive’ environment where he could paint en plein air. Am Haff was painted during the artist’s fifth stay in Nidden, a small fishing village on the Kurisches Haff (Curonian Lagoon) on the Baltic coast, where Thomas Mann would also make a home. The reverse of the canvas bears the inscription 'strahlende Sonne', which refers to the radiant sun depicted on the horizon. After his first visit to Nidden in the summer of 1909, it soon became Pechstein’s favourite summer resort, to which he often returned until 1920. However following the partition of Germany after the Versailles Treaty, the village of Nidden found itself outside the German border, and Pechstein did not return there until his final trip in 1939.

 

Having returned home to Berlin after the First World War, in a letter to his friend Georg Biermann from 6th August 1919 the artist described his emotional turmoil: ‘… I can return to Berlin, in order to throw myself ravenously into the long desired sea of colours. From time to time I still have dreams waking me at night, my nerves refusing to get used to the tranquillity of bourgeois existence. […] Finally I am completely free, sitting in my beloved Nidden, working and bursting with energy’ (quoted in Max Pechstein im Brücke-Museum (exhibition catalogue), Brücke-Museum, Berlin, 2001, p. 45, translated from German). With its bright colouration, coupled with a sense of beauty and tranquillity of the Nidden landscape, Am Haff is a remarkable example of this outburst of energy that characterised Pechstein’s work in the inter-war period.