Lot 13 D

The South Pacific is a central theme in Max Pechstein’s work – with this double-sided masterpiece, two paintings from the famous Palau phase of his oeuvre are coming up for auction at the same time.

It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Pechstein’s 1914 voyage to the Palau archipelago in Micronesia for the life and work of this artist. He would continue to process the impressions and inspiration he gathered there until his late work.
Pechstein’s fascination with the exotic cultures of Asia and Africa defined his work from early on. With the goal of taking a two-year hiatus from a European civilisation that he saw as cold and confining, the artist and his wife Lotte set out for Palau on a luxury steamer operated by Norddeutscher Lloyd in May 1914. This archipelago in the West Pacific had been a German colony since 1899. The voyage was made possible through the financial support of Pechstein’s gallerist Wolfgang Gurlitt, who was in turn guaranteed the rights to the artworks created in Palau. After stops in Hong Kong and other ports, the couple reached Palau in June 1914 (see comp. ill.). After a brief stay on an island that had already become heavily industrialised, they travelled on to the island of Koror, which was still preserved in an idyllic state, and this is where the Pechsteins moved into a meeting house no longer being used by the native residents.
Pechstein immersed himself without inhibition in the luxuriance of the tropical natural setting and the life of the indigenous population. “Having grown up among simple people and with nature myself, it is not difficult for me to relate to this abundance of new impressions. […] From the most profound sense of the human community, I was able to approach the South Sea islanders like brothers. […] I feel the most amazing unity all round me and breathe in a boundless feeling of happiness” (Max Pechstein, cited in: Moeller, Werke aus dem Brücke-Museum, op. cit. p. 16). As he had already done during his stays in Nida, where he had maintained close contact with the fishermen, Pechstein sought to live directly with the native residents of Palau. For him, their life seemed to still be in harmony with nature, and he idealised their primitiveness and freedom. At the same time, he largely excluded any awareness of the changes and intrusions already brought about by colonisation, industrialisation and missionary work. He recorded diverse impressions from life in Palau, particularly in pencil and reed-pen drawings, and also created a few paintings and wooden sculptures.
However, the outbreak of World War I brought a sudden end to his stay in his South Sea idyll after just four months. The archipelago was occupied by Japan, and this also led to a shift in the native residents’ benevolent attitude towards the Pechsteins. Together with other German colonists, they had to leave the island, and many of the works Pechstein created there were lost. They became prisoners of the Japanese for a few days before they were allowed to make the lengthy journey back to Europe.
Back in Berlin, the artist was immediately conscripted to serve in the war and then deployed on the Western Front. In early 1917, following his discharge, he was able to return back to Berlin and finally devote himself intensively to the impressions he had gathered on Palau. This was done within the sanctuary of his studio and living quarters, which he furnished not just with exotic art objects but also his own wall paintings featuring motifs from Palau.
Aesthetically Pechstein built – on the one hand – on the still lifes he had been creating before 1914, in which he had already integrated African, Asian and Oceanian figures and utilitarian objects. On the other hand, he created carefully and comprehensively composed figurative images which show the indigenous residents of Palau within the world of their everyday lives.
Our extraordinary, double-sided work unites both of these thematic complexes. The “Palau-Mädchen” are based on sketches and memories from his stay in the South Seas. Pechstein took up very similar figural motifs from his repertoire multiple times and developed them into various compositions. The graceful scene featuring young women unloading a canoe can also be found in almost identical form in the painting “Ankunft” (Soika 1917/70). Our version was evidently planned in terms of a larger image, as the interrupted motif at the right edge of the picture shows. Pechstein makes use of a stylised pictorial idiom in his motifs set in Palau. In doing so, he is alluding to the figurative art of its native inhabitants, with which he had already familiarised himself long before his journey with the help of objects at Dresden’s ethnological museum – he and fellow artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were particularly fascinated by its display of beams from a Palauan meeting house, which are carved and painted with an angular figural frieze (see comp. ill.). The graceful circle of working women realised in warm tones reflects the peaceful, paradisal conditions that Pechstein had hoped to find in Palau.
The “Stillleben mit Pfeife” is fascinating for its spontaneous and spirited brushwork, which also sets it apart from other still lifes from this period. The oblique position of the table and the number of vessels depicted on it generate a highly dynamic effect. As in the case of several other still lifes from this period, the brightly painted fan forms a boldly colourful background. By transferring its intense red-orange, bright yellow and blue on to the other objects, Pechstein achieves a vibrantly but harmoniously and cohesively coloured space of immensely powerful effect. The pipe of the title, which the passionate smoker has placed on the little box at the front left, is a pictorial element establishing a connection that is strongly personal – and also defines a great number of his self-portraits.
Thematically, the year 1917 was entirely dominated by South Sea motifs, however, they are “neither an accurate image of traditional Palauan culture nor the colonial reality there. Instead, the Palau paintings have far more to do with the needs, desires and projections of the artist and his public in Berlin in the fourth year of the First World War”, writes Aya Soika (in: Max Pechstein. Die Sonne in Schwarzweiss, exh. cat. Museum Wiesbaden 2024, p. 108).
Max Pechstein longed for Palau throughout his life, and its suggestive power became even more significant for him after the horrifying experiences of World War I. Even in the 1950s, he still continued to take up the theme in numerous works.
With a consummate power of painterly expression, our double-sided painting impressively unites Pechstein’s unbroken fascination with his South Sea paradise and the place of refuge – shaped by memories – which the artist had created in his Berlin studio.