Max Pechstein

Collection of the artist (until at least 1923)
Wolfgang Gurlitt, Berlin (on commission circa 1920)
Elizabeth Weiss de Csepel (née Baroness de Herzog), Hungary
E. & A. Silberman Galleries, New York (acquired from the above)
Edward C. & Dorothea Zucker-Franklin, New York (acquired from the above circa 1960)
Thence by descent

Berlin, Galerie Lutz & Co, circa 1922-23, no. 22
Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, H. M. Pechstein, 1923, no. 33

This work is in very good condition. Canvas is not lined and the reverse on which a 1917 still-life is painted is well preserved. The extreme perimeter of this image is covered by the stretcher and it is possible that the signature is in this area. The front on which a 1909-10 nude is painted retains a rich and textures impasto. There is a layer of varnish on the surface. There are pindot losses at upper and lower left corners. Under UV light, there are small strokes of retouch in the background just above figure's left elbow. There are small strokes of retouch in her right thigh. There is a small area of retouch in the brown pigments near the upper left corner. There is some old restoration visible at the lower left corner. Otherwise fine. There is no inpainting visible on the reverse.
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Painted circa 1909-10 and again on the reverse in 1917, the present work is an extraordinarily vibrant and enigmatic double-sided canvas from the height of Pechstein’s association with the Brücke group. Exhibiting brilliant colors applied in thick brushstrokes, these images represent Pechstein's explorations of color and form and exemplify his central stylistic contributions to the German avant-garde.

The founding members of the Brücke, Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, were all students of architecture, and their willfully primitive painting style was entirely self-taught. Max Pechstein’s artistic and social upbringing was rather different however, but he shared their enthusiastic response to the raw forms and colors that bespoke their aesthetic freedom. Peter Selz described the artist as “a man of a most affirmative character and elementary power...[who] came from a working-class background in the industrial city of Zwickau in Saxony, where his father was a textile worker. He took his first drawing lessons at ten and soon began to draw with passion, sketching the Saxonian countryside during his walks. Drawing to Pechstein was not an expression of the intellect. Rather, it meant a physical expression of his visual and motor senses” (Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1974, p. 90). Nonetheless, Pechstein proceeded down a traditional path toward painting. He apprenticed with a local painter in Zwickau for four years before joining the Dresden School for Arts and Crafts in 1900. Though still primarily painting in a style strongly influenced by the sinuous and decorative Jugendstil, Pechstein’s interest in the works of van Gogh, which he saw at the Galerie Arnold in 1905, as well as those of the most celebrated German painters Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach, was a powerful influence on his own nascent strand of Expressionism which he would rapidly develop from 1906 onward after meeting the artists of the Brücke.

By the time Pechstein painted Akt, his mastery of form and color had fully matured. In December 1907 the artist made his way to Paris where he took a room at a small hotel in the Latin Quarter. In Paris he had the opportunity of meeting the Fauves and seeing their works firsthand at the Salon des Indépendents in March 1908. Pechstein became friends with Dutch-French artist Kees van Dongen, making one of the most significant links between German Expressionism and French Fauvism. Their friendship even extended as far as an invitation for van Dongen to collaborate with the Brücke group. Van Dongen’s exotically inflected pictures of Parisian nightlife had a profound impact on Pechstein’s art (see fig. 2). His return to Germany toward the end of 1908 precipitated a number of paintings, including the present canvas and those by his Brücke colleagues, which gloried in a similarly debauched coloration and subject matter. The artist was one of the first of the Brücke group to make the important move from provincial Dresden to the teeming metropolis of Berlin, moving into a studio that was situated next door to that of Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner. The two began to work closely together, a partnership that no doubt incentivized Pechstein to push his stylistic expressions further, experimenting with elements that borrow from and expand on developing Fauvist technique.

During this crucial period in the artist’s career he spent the summers indulging in Freikörperkultur with his fellow painters Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff and Heckel as well as the female companions who modeled for them. Based on the physiognomy of the figure in the present work—full lips and a dark complexion—it is thought that the sitter for Akt is Charlotte “Lotte” Kaprolat. Pechstein met the then sixteen year old early in 1909, using her as a model repeatedly throughout that summer and into the fall; the two would go on to marry in 1911. Lotte is also likely the model for one of the figures in Zwei Frauenakte im zimmer (see fig. 1) painted that same year. The background of Akt, much like Zwei Frauenakte im zimmer, gives an impression of the colorful decorations and patterns inspired by the studio surroundings. The confident and discernible brushwork, bright colors and exaggerated forms that characterize the Die Brücke group’s approach to art, are all visible in the present work. The use of red contours that outline the figure is in line with the artist’s formal explorations at the time, demonstrating his determination to break through the traditional boundaries of painterly representation. 

Akt is a work the artist left unfinished, only to return to and re-use the canvas for another composition, Fuchsswanz. This was a frequent practice in the early decades of the twentieth century that points to the level of material shortages and financial hardships incurred during World War I. Returning to Berlin in the winter of 1917, Pechstein experienced a great flurry of artistic activity, painting a great many portraits and still lifes, among them Fuchsschwanz und ahornblätter (see fig. 4). During this period Pechstein revived the brilliant colors of his pre-war style which he applied in thick brushstrokes and blended directly on the surface. The luscious coloration of the predominant tones of green, contrasted with dark reds and an application of black contours seems to draw inspiration from French Fauve still life painting as well as the works of Cézanne and van Gogh.