The Pure Expression of Max Pechstein's Prints

The prints of Max Pechstein are a symphony in tactile seduction. They have a primitive linear quality indicative of the media. He enticed the medium to make spectacular portraits and figurative works which exude emotion, passion and action. He intertwines Afro-centric mask-like faces with actual primitive statues from the South Pacific and crowds up the composition, further heightening the angst taking place. These figures seemingly move comfortably with their angled features and confined spaces, packed with action and drama.

Pecstein is capably expressive with his color, when he chooses to use it, but he often does not, and we miss nothing for the choice. His black and white images sing with clarity and directness. They slap us in the face and say’ Hey, try doing better than this!” , and I would say that that may not always be possible. How does one improve upon a perfect expression?

As we look at the world’s current events, the work of the Expressionists ring truer and are more honest about how humanity is not always attractive or appealing. These works show us that there are still hard, not so noble sides to ourselves and our emotions can be powerful. Pechstein’s portraits often show hardened, weary faces vs. the mask-like veneer of others, while still others convey compassion and curiosity.

Pechstein’s work is a great model of the German Expressionist movement and his use of emotion to convey how we are all human.

Bio
Hermann Max Pechstein (1881 –1955) was a German artist, and a member of the expressionist Die Brücke art group. He is best known for creating images of portraits and landscapes.
Pechstein was born in Zwickau. He studied art at the Dresden’s School of Applied Arts and the Royal Art Academy. In 1906, he met fellow artist Erich Heckel and joined an art group called Die Brücke. Later in 1910, he helped to found an art group called Neue Sezession, which earned him attention for his work, but the Die Brucke group expelled him for breaking away from their group. He was a prolific printmaker, producing nearly nine hundred prints during his career.

After Pechstein travelled to France and Italy between 1907 and 1908, then he returned to Berlin. Pechstein developed an interest in a so-called “primitive” art like many of his Expressionist comrades. He travelled to the western Pacific island of Palau in 1914 where he created images based upon “exotic” subjects.

Pechstein never broke entirely with the Expressionist style. In 1916, the first monograph on Pechstein’s work was published. He collaborated with several publishers, including Fritz Gurlitt, who commissioned numerous portfolios and illustrated books.

He also received commissions to decorate houses and make designs for stained glass windows. At the outbreak of World War I He returned to Germany, and suffered a breakdown. At the end of the war, he joined the Novembergruppe and Arbeitsrat für kunst groups.

Pechstein was professor of art at the Berlin Academy from 1923-1933. He did commissions for the German government for the International Labor Office in Geneva, in 1926. The Nazis turned him out from teaching for being a degenerate artist, but he was reinstated in 1945. In 1933, a large portion of Pechstein’s work was confiscated by the Nazis. Several of his works were displayed in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937.

He is buried on the Evangelischer Friedhof Alt-Schmargendorf, in Berlin.

The Degenerate Prints of Kathe Kollwitz

The works in this article speak to a human truth about the depths of one's despair, death and the wretchedness of one's existence to survive without their loved ones. The artist whose brave hand unflinchingly created these pieces is Käthe Schmidt, more famously known as the artist/printmaker Kathe Kollwitz. She lived and worked in one of the most tumultuous periods of the 19th and 20th centuries, and experienced atrocities few would want to survive, but she spoke the truth with her scathingly critical lines and her rapiered compositions.  For her labors, she was eventually dubbed a 'degenerate' by Hitler's art elite, and while that's a matter of skewed opinion, history has since borne her work out as among the most moving tributes to humanity, on a par with the works of Goya, Delacroix and Dix.

Kathe was born on July 8th, 1867, in the East Prussian industrial city of Konigsberg. Her modest upbringing 'sparked' from a household fervently interested in discussions on social/political issues and Karl Marx; plus her maternal grandfather, Julius Rupp, was the leader of the Free Congregation movement. 

Both her father and grandfather were a big influence upon Kathe and her career. Rupp had strong socialist views and had been imprisoned for his religious beliefs, while Kathe's father, Karl Schmidt,  was a moral idealist. He encouraged his three daughters to have sympathy for the plight of the working-class, and he taught by guiding them rather than forcing his will upon them. He wanted his girls to be strong, believe in themselves and develop their individual talents. This was radical thinking in a period where women were encouraged to be mothers and housewives. 

The Schmidt family's involvement with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) enabled Käthe to meet Karl Kollwitz, whom she would eventually marry.  He was similarly passionate about politics and introduced her to the writings of August Bebel, who's socialist ideas wrote about the dissolution of marriage; and freeing women from their second-class status. Käthe was very interested in politics, and frequently read the work of Karl Kautsky, who was the period's best interpreter of Marx' theories.

Kathe's father believed she would become a great artist, and to encourage her, he arranged for Kathe, at the age of 14, to take art lessons with a local engraver, Rudolf Mauer. Two years later, Käthe went to study under the painter Emile Neide, and then she studied at the Berlin School for Women Artists under Karl Stauffer-Bern. In 1888 Käthe went to study at the Munich  Women's Art School. She also joined the informal Glücks-Café Composition Club, and the Munich Etching Club.Through her studies, it became apparent that her true interest was in the expressiveness of line and drawing, not with paint and color. She almost exclusively devoted herself for drawing and printmaking from this point forward.

Karl Kollwitz and Kathe were married in 1891 after Karl became a doctor. They moved to a working-class neighborhood of Berlin and both worked on pursuing their respective careers. In May, 1892, Käthe gave birth to her first child, a son, named Hans. Four years later, Käthe gave birth to her second son, Peter. Having children was a burden to her career, but her husband provided live-in support so she could continue her work. "I was more productive because I was more sensual, I lived as a human being must live, passionately interested in everything."

Soon afterward, Kollwitz began to exhibit in Berlin, and received both criticism for her sex, and praise for her talent. Regardless, she soon rose to the artistic surface and generally received accolades for the honesty and truth of her work. She is known for having produced a series of lithographs illustrating the 1844 Weaver's Uprising, based upon the writings of Marx, who had proclaimed it as the birth of a German workers' movement. Kollwitz went on to produce other series of prints and drawings based upon social/political and deeply personal issues: namely losses of sons and children which was something she'd experienced firsthand during the World Wars due to the deaths of her son Peter, and Peter's son. There ones sees her lines are simultaneously as sharp as a razor blade and softly caressing as a warm blanket.

Kollwitz' work has shone as a beacon of light in the darkness  - letting us see the depths of her own despair, but also those of the German people. They suffered loss and shame and world rebuke for their atrocities, but they were human, too. Mothers lost their children,  husbands, fathers and brothers. Children starved to death and everyone suffered collateral damage from battles. There was no relief.  I have seen her etchings and lithographs and rarely do I see someone so adept at drawing that the lines literally pulsate and 'breathe'. Kollwitz is among that caliber of artists, and I, for one, am grateful that her work exists to remind us what life is about, that expression, passion and emotions can jump off a page and leap into your heart, grab it, shake it up and make you weep. Her piece below is one such piece where a mother walks through an abandoned battlefield in the stealth of night, through blood and bodies strewed as far as one can see, shining a lone flashlight in the sea of dead faces, one after another, in a desperate search to find her child. It rips at our soul and we feel her plight. 

Kollwitz' work shows all of that and more through her prints, but while she received praised for her skills, she was eventually marked as a 'Degenerate' artist in WWII Germany, set up as an example of what 'not' to do, what was 'unacceptable' to the sterile genetic and artistic views of Adolph Hitler and his insane sense of Germanic euphemistic harmony. Her images of death and loss and Marxist worker revolts spoke against Hitler's watered-down group of 'sanctioned art' and she was put up to public revile. Thankfully, her work (and those other 'degenerate' artists) survive for us to know and be reminded that with wars' victory and glory comes sacrifice and tragic loss. The saying goes, 'that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger'.... Kollwitz'  own self-portrait series shows her pain and suffering, and a steely reserve to survive. If that's what it means to be a degenerate artist, then so be it. I'd prefer to have her crusading line (and anyone like her), draw the truth any day.