Max Pechstein:
Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)
Proportional view
Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)
Max Pechstein:
Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)

Quick info

unique piece | signed | dated | watercolour and ink on paper | framed | size 55 x 62.5 cm

Product no. IN-950706.R1
Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)
Max Pechstein: Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)

Detailed description

Picture "Fisherman I" (1917) (Unique piece)

In 1909, Max Pechstein travelled for the first time to the East Prussian fishing village of Nidden on the Curonian Spit (now part of Lithuania). Pechstein liked the peaceful village and quickly became close to the local fishermen and labourers. The remote Nidden (Nida in Lithuanian) became the artist's favourite holiday destination. Here, he could escape from the hectic pace of Berlin and enjoy nature. Of course, he also processed his impressions artistically on-site, as seen in this watercolour from 1917.

Pechstein presents the viewer with fishermen and fisherwomen engaged in their hard work. The fishermen appear to have just returned from a trip and are unloading their catch. The artist was fascinated by the simple and honest workers who earned their livelihood under difficult conditions. Pechstein devoted himself to this genre until the end of his life.

Watercolour and ink on paper, 1917, signed and dated. Motif size/sheet size 29 x 37.5 cm. Size in frame 55 x 62.5 cm as shown.

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

Portrait of the artist Max Pechstein

About Max Pechstein

1881-1955

Max Pechstein is considered today, as he was then, one of the most important representatives of German Expressionism. In spring 1906, he joined the artists' group "Die Brücke", which had been founded the previous year by Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Bleyl. In the field of graphic art, he produced an oeuvre of over 850 woodcuts, lithographs and etchings in addition to his paintings.

What Tahiti was to Paul Gauguin, the Baltic Sea coast was to Max Pechstein: a paradise where he found peace, but above all great inspiration. From 1909 onwards, he travelled several times to Nidden on the Curonian Spit, where Lovis Corinth had worked as a young art student more than a quarter of a century earlier. However, when the Treaty of Versailles placed the Curonian Spit under Allied administration in 1920, the way there was blocked. In his own words, Pechstein had to "once again go in search of a spot of earth that was not overrun by painters, tourists and bathers". He found it in Leba, where from then on he spent his summers on a regular basis.

"For more than twenty years Max Pechstein went to the Baltic coast every summer, first to the Curonian Spit, then to Pomerania, which naturally connected him closely to our house. When he rented a room here with his first wife in 1921, he had no idea how attached he would soon feel to the small harbour town of Leba, for he fell in love with Marta Möller, the daughter of his innkeeper. The pristine nature with its beach lakes and the fishing boats in the harbour, the pipe in his mouth, tanned and the anchor tattooed, those things stayed with the passionate angler Pechstein until the end of his life, even when he and his wife could no longer go to Pomerania after the Second World War." (Dr. Birte Frenssen, Deputy Director at the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald)

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