Picture "On the Shore" (1920)
Picture "On the Shore" (1920)
Quick info
limited, 100 copies | signed | etching on handmade paper | framed | size 47 x 51.5 cm
Detailed description
Picture "On the Shore" (1920)
In his etching from 1920, Max Pechstein captures a moment that is simultaneously marked by both tranquillity and movement. The scene depicts a group of people by the river, its banks lined with trees and bushes. The linework is distinctive yet fluid, creating an almost rhythmic movement within the picture. Pechstein avoids a detailed depiction of the landscape, instead focusing on the structure of the forms.
The trees, water, and ground are drawn with bold, expressive strokes and hatching, reflecting the organic flow of nature. The composition thrives on the dynamic interplay between dark shadows and lighter areas where light reflects off the water and the riverside vegetation. The river - being the central element - almost functions as a symbol of the continuous flow of time and life itself.
Drypoint, fluted file and brush etching, 1920. 100 copies on laid paper with the blindstamp "Die Schaffenden ", signed. Catalogue raisonné Krüger R116, FR 108, published in "Die Schaffenden ", 3rd year, 1st portfolio, sheet 40. Motif size 20.5 x 26.5 cm. Sheet size 31 x 41 cm. Size in frame 47 x 51.5 cm as shown.
Producer: ars mundi Edition Max Büchner GmbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hanover, Germany, [email protected]
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)
The field of graphic arts, that includes artistic representations, which are reproduced by various printing techniques.
Printmaking techniques include woodcuts, copperplate engraving, etching, lithography, serigraphy, among others.