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MAX PECHSTEIN Das Vater Unser IX: Sondern erlöse uns von dem Übel.
Woodcut with hand coloring in watercolor, 1921. 396x297 mm; 15 5/8x11 3/4 inches, full margins. The deluxe edition of 50 with hand coloring (from the total edition of 250). Signed in pencil, lower right. Printed by Fritz Voigt, Berlin. Published by Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin. From Das Vater Unser. A very good impression.
According to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where there is an uncolored impression of this woodcut, the subject of this work illustrates the line from the Lord's Prayer, "But deliver us from evil." Pechstein's (1881-1955) portfolio Das Vater Unser (The Lord's Prayer) contains twelve different woodcuts. "Promising forgiveness and deliverance from evil, the Lord's Prayer resonated powerfully in postwar German society, which was saddled with war guilt and reparations, beset by hunger, and racked by civil unrest and political violence. Pechstein illustrated a single verse of the Lord's Prayer on each of this portfolio's twelve sheets, following the German translation from Martin Luther's Small Catechism, which emphasizes the power of individual prayer. Pechstein's woodcuts contrast God's grandeur and omnipotence with his humble followers' modest lives. The artist clothed the faithful in the simple garb of Baltic fishermen, familiar to him from his repeated stays in Nidden on Prussia's easternmost border. Their masklike faces and blocky, angular bodies combine the styles of medieval German woodcuts and forms sourced from the South Pacific, which Pechstein had visited before World War I, and from Africa.
Pechstein created the portfolio during a time of intense personal and social upheaval. Only two years earlier, he had been an instrumental figure in revolutionary artists' organizations that had agitated for social reform in Germany's newly established democracy. But like many others he quickly grew disillusioned, and, it seems, he began looking for change not through politics but through heavenly intervention." Krüger 265.
