157 - Hermann Max Pechstein

Hermann Max Pechstein Bewegte See 1935 Gouache on card. India ink of a circus rider to verso. 53.5 x 70 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'HMPechstein 1935' in pencil lower left. - Very good condition. Verso with slight paper loss and remains of old mount along the edges. Provenance Private collection, USA; Lempertz Cologne, auction 497, 1 Dec. 1967, lot 582; Private collection, South Germany; Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf (label on backing card); Wilhelm Haferkamp, Brussels (1970-1985 Vice President European Commission); Private collection, Belgium “The eye in the vastness of chaos, let the current of creativity flow through your fingertips […] Painful and joyful is the exhilaration of giving birth, yet peel the fruit clean. Leave the nursery outside” (Max Pechstein, quoted in: Paul Westheim (ed.), Max Pechstein. Gedichte und Aufzeichnungen, in: Künstlerbekenntnisse. Briefe/Tagebuchblätter/Betrachtungen heutiger Künstler, Berlin 1925, p. 240). The darkness of evening frames the white crest of a wave surging to its peak at this moment of utmost tension. Beneath it, the receding water at the bottom edge of the picture reveals a patch of dark, damp sand. The fiery red glow of a setting sun brushes the horizon, whilst seagulls fly across the churning water. Such waves have a long tradition in the history of art. Without claiming to be exhaustive, examples include Hokusai’s "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (c. 1830) and Gustave Courbet’s famous series of around 60 paintings featuring waves filling the entire canvas (created around 1869/70; one of which had been part of the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin since 1906). It is almost certain that Pechstein was familiar with both of these works, and they are likely to have served as a starting point for his artistic exploration. His artist friend Emil Nolde, too, had repeatedly depicted waves in oil paintings and watercolours since 1926. For Pechstein, who always sought to be close to the sea, the Pomeranian coast was a key source of artistic inspiration, even after the National Socialists came to power, following which he was stripped of his professorship at the Berlin Academy in 1933. Water appears in various forms in Pechstein’s paintings: in the reed-fringed lakes of Gader and Koser, in rivers and streams, in the small harbour at Leba and, not least, in the vast expanse of the sea. After the end of the Second World War, Pechstein was barred from returning to Leba, which now belonged to Poland. He continued, however, to draw inspiration from the Baltic Sea whilst living in other coastal towns.