About this Item
Original exhibition poster by Max Pechstein. 88 x 84 cm, in very good condition. Hermann Max Pechstein , born December 31 , 1881 in Zwickau , died June 29, 1955 in West Berlin , was a German visual artist in painting and graphics , associated with expressionism . Max Pechstein was the son of a textile worker. Between 1896 and 1900 he earned his living as a decorative painter in his hometown of Zwickau, and then moved to Dresden to study painting. In 1906 he got to know Erich Heckel , who the year before had formed the artist group Brücke together with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl . Pechstein enthusiastically joined the group. His style soon showed evidence of a full, if more decorative, incorporation of the other members' ideas, both in his taste for the raw and unsophisticated and his expressive use ofcolors . In 1908, Max Pechstein moved to Berlin, where the others in the group would only arrive in 1911. In 1910, Pechstein was at the center of the formation of the Neue Secession , at a break with the Berlin Secession . In the Neue Secession, the Brücke group participated until the end of 1911, when a split led to the group leaving the Secession. Pechstein, for his part, left Brücke in 1912, the year before the group finally disbanded, because the members developed in different directions. Pechstein's later work expresses, in common with Otto Mueller , a more sophisticated, decorative form of primitivism . In 1923, Max Pechstein was admitted as a member of the prestigious Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. That year he was also appointed professor at the same academy, a position he held until 1933. After the Nazi takeover , he was dismissed from his position. It did not help that he could present an Aryan certificate , as the aesthetics he represented were defined as entartete Kunst and this was no longer desirable in the country. A drawing of a South Seasman eating was shown at the exhibition "Kulturbolschewistische Bilder" at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1933. It would eventually be seized (1937) and has no provenance after 1941, according to the seizure inventory compiled by the Freie Universität Berlin (see Sources). In a situation where Max Pechstein was ultimately unable to provide for his family, he joined the state welfare program Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt at the age of 52 in 1934 . The sphere in which he, as a middle-aged former professor of painting, served is unknown, but it was probably visual art in some more artisanal form. Three years later, in 1937, he was put into service, probably in a similar way, in some suitable section of the newly formed Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps . In 1937, Max Pechstein was expelled as a member of the academy. In July of the same year, the Ministry of Propaganda seized what was of him in German museums. There were 512 works, 32 watercolours , 408 graphic sheets , 40 paintings and 32 drawings . 23 of these works were shown at various intentionally derogatory Entartete Kunst exhibitions, 2 watercolours, 4 lithographs, 5 woodcuts, 11 paintings and 1 drawing. Most seized watercolors lacked provenance afterwards, but some were taken abroad through booty. Many woodcuts, Pechstein's favorite graphic technique, was returned to German museums after the war, including the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. The three confiscated copies of Max Pechstein's portfolio Das Vater Unser (1921), his illustration of the Christian prayer Our Father, lack provenance after 1937, but leaves 2, 5, 8 and 11, were shown at the blacksmith exhibition in Munich's Hofgartenarkade in 1937. After the war, Max Pechstein was appointed professor at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. [. Seller Inventory # 23693
Contact seller
Report this item
