Kim Douglas Wiggins

Untitled

Alte Fischerhütten (1949) by Max Pechstein is an oil on canvas in which the artist transforms a humble cluster of weathered fishing huts into a study of light, form, and atmosphere. Broad, rhythmic brushstrokes delineate the worn timbers and thatched roofs, while a sky streaked with lavender and rose imbues the scene with a quiet, almost meditative luminosity. Pechstein's bold outlines and flattened perspective are tempered by a late-career restraint, allowing the simple geometry of dunes, huts, and sea to resonate with an almost timeless calm. The artwork is signed lower right, "HMPechstein 1949" and signed verso, "Alte Fischerhütten 1949 HMPechstein” Provenance: Private Collection, Europe Lempertz, Cologne, June 15, 1966, lot 531 Selected Artists Galleries, New York, acquired by 1970 Private Collection, New York, acquired from the above Private Collection, by descent from above Phillips, New York, Wednesday, November 15, 2023, lot 123 Private Collection, acquired from the above Literature: Aya Soika, Max Pechstein The Catalgoue raisonne of oil paintings, Volume II 1919–1954, Munich, 2011, no. 1949/12, p. 490, illustrated Hermann Max Pechstein was born on December 31, 1881, in Zwickau, into a working-class family headed by his father, a textile-mill craftsman. Drawn to art early on, he apprenticed as a decorative painter from 1896 to 1900 before enrolling at Dresden’s School of Applied Arts and, from 1902, studying under Otto Gussmann at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His academic grounding—unique among his future peers—laid a solid foundation for the bold, expressive work that would follow. In 1906 Erich Heckel invited Pechstein to join Die Brücke, the pioneering Expressionist collective, and he quickly became one of its most active members. Exposure to ethnographic wood carvings in Dresden in 1905 spurred his first woodcuts, and travels to Italy (1907) and Paris (1908)—where he befriended the Fauvist Kees van Dongen—expanded his palette and compositional daring. After relocating to Berlin in 1908, he co-founded the New Secession in 1910, serving as its chairman and gaining acclaim for richly colored prints inspired by Van Gogh, Matisse, and the Fauves. With the outbreak of World War I, Pechstein’s peripatetic life took him from internment in Japan to service on the Western Front in 1916. In the revolution’s aftermath, he aligned with radical socialist art...

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