August Macke

August Macke Sitting nude II 1912 Watercolor and gouache on white tracing paper. 32 x 27 cm. Framed under glass. Back lower right with faded estate stamp and dated in pencil and titled "Sitting Nude". - In good, freshly colored condition. Heiderich 158; Vriesen (1957) 176 Provenance Estate of the artist; Kunstsalon Änne Abels, Cologne (label on the reverse); private property Munich, since 1957; Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, auction 1059, Modern Art, November 27, 2015, lot 304; private collection Lower Saxony. Exhibitions Hannover 1935 (Kestner-Gesellschaft), August Macke, cat. No. 73; Bielefeld 1957 (Städtisches Kunsthaus), Macke. Watercolor Exhibition, cat. No. 176, ill. p. 26; Arnsberg 2019 (Sauerland Museum), August Macke ganz nah, full-page color ill. p. 83. In 1912, August Macke explored the subject of the female nude in many ways, both in watercolor and drawing. The "Seated Nude II", which captivates by its luminosity, was developed by him purely from the color. The figure is executed in reddish-brown outlines, the incarnate parts change to an orange tone in the shadowed areas, lights are set in light green by individual details. The same light green as well as dark blue are the determining colors of the surrounding space, which also takes up the color scheme of the nude in the lower area. The resulting complementary contrasts give the figure a special emphasis and visually draw it further into the foreground, while the surrounding space recedes. Macke was impressed by the spatial effects that Robert Delaunay had developed through the use of color in his work. In 1912, contact between the two artists intensified, inspiring Macke to conduct similar color experiments. "Delaunay, without chiaroscuro, works the colored contrast groups together in such a way (or perhaps it is better to say that he works them apart but into a unity) that there is a violent back and forth movement in his paintings." (August Macke, quoted in: August Macke and Early Modernism in Europe, exh. Cat. Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster/Kunstmuseum Bonn 2001/2002, p. 20). The undefined natural forms of the surrounding space have an ornamental quality often found in Macke's watercolors of this period. The same nude with stronger interior modeling also exists as a pencil drawing ("Studie zum 'Roten Akt'", Heiderich Zeichnungen 1100), but without an executed surrounding space.