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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Max K. Pechstein dated Hamburg im Dezember 2002.
Executed in the summer of 1910 Sommer ("Summer") is one of the finest of the celebrated series of paintings that Pechstein executed during his month-long visit to the Moritzburg lakes.
From mid-August to mid-July, Pechstein, along with fellow Brücke artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel and their girlfriends and models spent an idyllic summer painting, bathing and attempting to "return to nature" in and around the man-made lakes of the secluded Moritzburg woodland. "We painter folk set out early every morning heavily laden with our gear," Pechstein later recalled, "the models trailing behind with pockets full of eatables and drinkables. We lived in absolute harmony, working and bathing. If we found ourselves short of a male model, one of us stepped into the breach."(Max Pechstein in Junge Kunst, vol. 1, Leipzig, 1919.)
Attempting to live in closer harmony with nature by returning to a simple and consciously more primitive existence, the summer of 1910 became a particularly productive period for all the Brücke artists. They were well aware of the example set by their predecessors Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. By working in close proximity to one another the style of each artist's work grew closer. Indeed, for the brief period of this idyllic month at Moritzburg, each artist's work ascended to a new level and began to manifest the kind of group style and identity that they had all long sought in their work.
The foremost characteristic of this "Moritzburg" style is a directness and immediacy - undoubtedly the result of the group's plein air activities - that manifests itself in a series of almost gestural brushstrokes of intense colour and raw individuality. In Sommer, with its strong vibrant colours magically capturing the baking heat of a summer afternoon and its bold angular brushstrokes eloquently moulding the forms of the four naked figures standing in the tall grass, making it probably the finest and certainly the most vividly atmospheric of all of Pechstein's Moritzburg canvases.
Feeling in harmony with nature and living a simple life close to that of the 'primitives' they idealised, was a deliberate and conscious aim for the Brücke artists at this time. The directness and immediacy in their manner of working reflected their belief that man's true response to nature and his environment could only accurately be conveyed through his instincts and his intuition. A raw and direct response to their environment like that of so-called 'primitive' man would encourage each artist to perform and create without recourse to the cultural conditioning of modern life. The Brücke artists' experiences at Moritzburg only encouraged this belief and forged a sense of togetherness and of group identity that had hitherto been lacking in their art. In response to this, through their Moritzburg paintings they often sought to propagate this group ethic and to convey through their work, the harmonious integration with nature they all felt. In Sommer the relaxed pose of each of the figures, and the elegant spacing of the composition along with the deliberate use of identical colours for both figures and landscape, clearly reflects Pechstein's intention to integrate the figures within the landscape in as harmonious a way as possible. Only the Japanese parasol (formerly an attribute of Kirchner's 1909 portrait of his girlfriend Dodo) held by the central woman and casting a deep blue shadow over her face, ultimately identifies the naked figures of this vibrant work as being 'city folk'.
Executed in the summer of 1910 Sommer ("Summer") is one of the finest of the celebrated series of paintings that Pechstein executed during his month-long visit to the Moritzburg lakes.
From mid-August to mid-July, Pechstein, along with fellow Brücke artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel and their girlfriends and models spent an idyllic summer painting, bathing and attempting to "return to nature" in and around the man-made lakes of the secluded Moritzburg woodland. "We painter folk set out early every morning heavily laden with our gear," Pechstein later recalled, "the models trailing behind with pockets full of eatables and drinkables. We lived in absolute harmony, working and bathing. If we found ourselves short of a male model, one of us stepped into the breach."(Max Pechstein in Junge Kunst, vol. 1, Leipzig, 1919.)
Attempting to live in closer harmony with nature by returning to a simple and consciously more primitive existence, the summer of 1910 became a particularly productive period for all the Brücke artists. They were well aware of the example set by their predecessors Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. By working in close proximity to one another the style of each artist's work grew closer. Indeed, for the brief period of this idyllic month at Moritzburg, each artist's work ascended to a new level and began to manifest the kind of group style and identity that they had all long sought in their work.
The foremost characteristic of this "Moritzburg" style is a directness and immediacy - undoubtedly the result of the group's plein air activities - that manifests itself in a series of almost gestural brushstrokes of intense colour and raw individuality. In Sommer, with its strong vibrant colours magically capturing the baking heat of a summer afternoon and its bold angular brushstrokes eloquently moulding the forms of the four naked figures standing in the tall grass, making it probably the finest and certainly the most vividly atmospheric of all of Pechstein's Moritzburg canvases.
Feeling in harmony with nature and living a simple life close to that of the 'primitives' they idealised, was a deliberate and conscious aim for the Brücke artists at this time. The directness and immediacy in their manner of working reflected their belief that man's true response to nature and his environment could only accurately be conveyed through his instincts and his intuition. A raw and direct response to their environment like that of so-called 'primitive' man would encourage each artist to perform and create without recourse to the cultural conditioning of modern life. The Brücke artists' experiences at Moritzburg only encouraged this belief and forged a sense of togetherness and of group identity that had hitherto been lacking in their art. In response to this, through their Moritzburg paintings they often sought to propagate this group ethic and to convey through their work, the harmonious integration with nature they all felt. In Sommer the relaxed pose of each of the figures, and the elegant spacing of the composition along with the deliberate use of identical colours for both figures and landscape, clearly reflects Pechstein's intention to integrate the figures within the landscape in as harmonious a way as possible. Only the Japanese parasol (formerly an attribute of Kirchner's 1909 portrait of his girlfriend Dodo) held by the central woman and casting a deep blue shadow over her face, ultimately identifies the naked figures of this vibrant work as being 'city folk'.