August Macke:
Picture "Women with Jugs" (around 1912) (Unique piece)
Proportional view
Picture "Women with Jugs"  (around 1912) (Unique piece)
August Macke:
Picture "Women with Jugs" (around 1912) (Unique piece)

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unique piece | certified | stamped | pencil and coloured pencil | framed | size 38 x 45.5 cm

Collector's tip
Product no. IN-920067.R1
Picture "Women with Jugs"  (around 1912) (Unique piece)
August Macke: Picture "Women with Jugs" (around 1912) (U...

Detailed description

Picture "Women with Jugs" (around 1912) (Unique piece)

"I almost always have the sketchbook at hand on the street to gradually learn to fully master movements of people and animals because no professor teaches you that, and it is the most important thing there is." These words were addressed by the painter August Macke in a letter to his parents at the age of eighteen.

While Macke's painting is undoubtedly one of the icons of Expressionism, his drawings are among the most impressive artistic achievements of the 20th century.
Drawing was his constant companion. While it was initially a means of learning painterly skills and expressive possibilities, from 1912, it became the preferred medium for preliminary studies of his world-famous paintings.

The spectrum of drawing techniques ranges from pencil to ink, coloured chalk, ink pencil and pastel. "Women with Jugs" proves to be a cleverly composed, dynamic figure study, made with coloured pencil and pencil, which knows how to captivate our gaze in the varying degrees of graphic execution.

Pencil and coloured pencil, ca. 1912. The sheet is listed in the catalogue raisonné of Macke's drawings (Ursula Heiderich) under the number 1576. A copy of a signed confirmation by Mrs Heiderich is available. Stamp of the estate "Nachlass August Macke" on the back. Motif size/sheet size 15 x 21.5 cm. Size in frame 38 x 45.5 cm as shown.

Producer: ARTES Kunsthandelsgesellschaft mbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hannover, Deutschland E-Mail: info@kunsthaus-artes.de

Portrait of the artist August Macke

About August Macke

1887-1914

Radiant yellow, bright red, strong blue: the intensity and unique luminosity of the colours are typical of August Macke's work. In his paintings, Macke shows an intact world and primarily focuses on people. Probably because of the influence of his origins and the Rhenish cheerfulness, both as a person and as a painter, August Macke is considered to be one of the most famous German painters of the 20th-century.

Macke was a member of the artists' association "Blauer Reiter" and the most important representative of Rhenish Expressionism. He is considered the greatest German colour talent of his generation. But his drawings, sketches and designs also prove that he is one of the great artists of the 20th-century.

August Macke, born in Meschede on 3 January 1887, began his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf but dropped out prematurely. On journeys to France, Italy and the Netherlands he studied mainly Impressionism. With the artists of the "Blaue Reiter", whom he had known since 1911, he exhibited several times and contributed to the eponymous almanack. His financial security was assured by his sponsor Bernhard Koehler, an uncle of his wife Elisabeth.

Macke had already found his style of unmistakable independence. Inspired by Cézanne's tectonic pictorial structure and Matisse's flatness, he combined analytical Cubism with the pure colourfulness of Fauvism. The prismatic colours were the principal elements with which August Macke composed his painting. In doing so, the artist used the colours like a musician uses the tones, chords and scales of colourful forms.

As early as 1910, his friendship with Franz Marc enabled him to spend time at Lake Tegernsee. Macke's sensitivity for light effects was already evident in the paintings he created there. This is heightened in the watercolour paintings he produced on the famous trip to Tunis he made with Paul Klee and Louis Moillet in 1914. Simplification of form and the luminosity of the colours characterise this series of works.

For the first time in 1913, Macke‘s work was exhibited together with the works of the European avant-garde at the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, which he co-organised.

From 1913 Macke lived in Switzerland with his wife Elisabeth and his son Walter. But the family's happiness only lasted for a short time. As soon as the First Wolrd War began, August Macke was killed on the battlefield in Champagne, France, on 26 September 1914. His friend Franz Marc commented: "The greedy war is a hero's death richer, but German art poorer by one hero."

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