?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
MAX PECHSTEIN Russisches Ballett.
Watercolor on Japan paper mounted on cream wove paper, 1912. 225x400 mm; 9x15 3/4 inches. Initialed and dated in ink, lower right recto.
Pechstein was an active member of the art group Die Brücke from its inception in 1905-06, a close friend of the group's leading artist Erich Heckel (see lot 119) and the only member to have received formal art training. He joined the Berlin Sezession from 1909-10, and then helped to found and become chairman of the Neue Sezession group and gained recognition for his decorative and colorful paintings, mainly influenced by van Gogh, Matisse and the Fauves (Pechstein had traveled to Paris in 1908, where he met the Fauve artists and exhibited with the Société Anonyme).
After attending performances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1912, Pechstein created a series of drawings, which he then translated into a series of 7 etchings, inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The proposed series of 7 etchings never materialized: only one of the etchings, Russisches Ballet I, 1912 (Krüger 71) was ever published, it appeared in the Jahresmappe der Brücke "Pechstein" 1912 and the other 6 etchings are known only in proofs.
During the 1910s and 1920s, Pechstein exhibited widely throughout Germany and Europe and his popularity increased. Beginning in 1933, Pechstein was persecuted by the Nazis because of his art, and he was banned from painting or exhibiting and later that year was fired from his teaching position at the Berlin Academy. More than 325 of his paintings were removed from German museums and his works were displayed in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of 1937 in Munich. He went into seclusion in rural Pomerania during World War II and was ultimately reinstated in 1945 to his teaching position, gaining numerous titles and awards for his work during the last decade of his career.
