1623 - Ackermann, Max. Seated Male Nude. Red chalk on chamois-colored vellum. Lower right: fragments of a truncated date and the signature “Sept. M.” Probably circa 1917. Sheet dimensions: 52.8 x 41.6 cm.

Ackermann, Max. Seated Male Nude. Red chalk on chamois-colored vellum. Lower right: fragments of a truncated date and the signature “Sept. M.” Probably circa 1917. Sheet dimensions: 52.8 x 41.6 cm. His brother Hermann apparently also served as the model for this nude study by Max Ackermann (1887–1975), which was likely created shortly after Ackermann’s discharge from military service in 1917. - Drafted into military service in 1915 as a Landsturm soldier, Ackermann was discharged from military service in 1917 as unfit for duty following a prolonged stay in a military hospital and turned to a more veristic style, focusing on socially provocative themes. For a long time, the “pioneer of non-representational painting” in Germany would oscillate between figuration and abstraction, between Verism and New Objectivity, and between geometric forms and pure fields of color, before finally settling on an exclusively non-representational visual language in the last years of his life. - Reverse side shows remnants of an earlier mounting, with minimal staining and some crease marks. - Mounted on cardboard in the upper corners on the reverse; edges irregularly trimmed, more heavily browned and stained, with pinholes, creased, and a corner loss in the lower left. - Provenance: From the estate of the Ackermann family.