Details

On the inside of the portfolio cover with unknown collector’s bookplate “HM” (2x).
Krüger L 303-357.

Provenance:

Private collection, Hesse.

Description

“My dear, these few pen strokes on the lithograph stone should tell you where I travelled in 1913 and 1914.” With these words, Hermann Max Pechstein begins the introductory text to his folder “Reisebilder. Italy – South Seas”. With the 50 lithographed pen drawings, the artist invites the viewer to discover the world through his eyes.

Two views of Thuringia and Lake Lugano are followed by 26 maritime scenes from his third trip to Italy in 1913 to Monterosso al Mare, a picturesque fishing village in the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast. The painting “Fishing Boat” (Brücke Museum, Berlin), created in the winter of 1913, which Pechstein counts among his most important works, is also based on the large number of sketches made here. The following 22 lithographs tell the story of Pechstein’s journey to the Palau Islands in the South Seas. The artist’s main focus is always on the people in harmony with their natural surroundings.

Like his fellow Brücke artists, Pechstein was interested in non-European folk art and hoped to find the essential and original in the South Seas, a harmonious unity between man and nature, which already seemed to have been lost in the modern European world. However, apart from Emil Nolde, Pechstein was the only one who actually travelled far and wide in search of new sources of artistic inspiration and challenges.