?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
MAX PECHSTEIN Château de Cléo de Mérode bei Hollebeke.
Lithograph on cream wove paper 1916-17. 520x385 mm; 20 1/2x15 1/4 inches, full margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of only 12. Signed, dated and inscribed "Probedruck" in pencil, lower margin. Published by Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin. From Kriegslithographien. A superb impression of this extremely scarce, early lithograph.
We have not found another impression at auction in the past 30 years.
Pechstein (1881-1955) traveled to the German occupied Palau Islands in the South Pacific in 1914, in search of artistic inspiration, but was forced to leave when the Japanese military invaded. On his return journey he was imprisoned by the Japanese at Nagasaki. After his return to Germany in 1915, he was drafted in the army and sent to the Western Front until his discharge in 1917.
Pechstein was among the most active of the politicized German Expressionist artists. He joined two radical, socialist groups: the Arbeitsrat für Kunst and the Novembergruppe, which he founded with Georg Tappert and other artists.
This is one of 12 lithographs Pechstein created for a series Kriegslithographien that documents his time spent as a soldier on the Western Front. Krüger 194.
