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Lot Essay
1912 was a pivotal year in the history of German Expressionism. The great Sonderbundaustellung in Cologne opened in May 1912 and was met with great enthusiasm by both the critics and the public. The angry young men of the Brücke were now established members of the European avant-garde. Heckel and Kirchner designed a magnificent chapel interior for the Sonderbundaustellung of which both artists were extremely proud: "The colours of the chapel are a violet-red, poppy shade and an acid green with blue. Because of the pointed arches which rise one above the other the rear wall seems as high as the heavens and the floor appears almost to float. The windows are very dark so that all the forms swim and since the material is rough, the paint does not sit on the surface and this gains in depth and splendour..." (undated letter to Gustav Shiefler, probably June, 1912).
The acclaim that such commissions brought Heckel led to friendships with many of the other leading European avant-gardists. Amongst them these were pivotal, as his work developed out of the colourism of 1909-11 towards the more dynamic cloisonné forms of 1912-13. Leaving much of his Brücke past, Heckel came under the influence of Franz Marc and August Macke, who visited him in Berlin in late 1912, Lyonel Feininger and the Italian Futurists (fig. 2), who had a very succesful show at Howarth Walden's Galerie der Strum in 1912. What all of them offered Heckel was not simply colourism, but dynamism. Marc was fascinated by rayonnism and the concept of latent energy in all inanimate and animate forms, Feininger was interested in interpreting all figurative subjects in the new language of dynamic cubism, and the Italian Futurists persuaded their audience that every object had a latent kinetic energy which could be captured in paint.
With the benfit of hindsight, the demise of the Brücke moevement in May 1913 should have been a major backward step, perhaps even a catastrophe, for Kirchner and Heckel. In truth, the main protagonists, Kirchner and Heckel could not have been less concerned. In 1913 Kirchner was painting his finest oils, the Berlin Streetscenes and Heckel was painting with greater vivacity than ever before. 1913 was Heckel's greatest year. In 1913 he had his first one man show at Galerie Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin and painted a series of magnificent dynamic canvasses including Parksee (fig. 3) and Gläserner Tag now housed in the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst in Munich (fig. 4).
Heckel's new post Brücke style saw him replace the soft radiant lines of 1910 with the tough, angular dissecting lines of 1913. He strives to create shimmering prismatic light effects in his landscapes as a celebration of the latent energy of the natural world. The Italian Futurists, Balla and Boccioni, were striving to achieve a very similar effect in their works of 1912 and 1913. However, in Germany, Heckel was also paying lipservice to a particular philosophical view of the universe very much in vogue amongst contemporary German thinkers. Wilhelm Worringer wrote a treatise on art and transcendentalism in 1908 entitled "Abstraction and Empathy". A critical passage perfectly describes the present painting:
'All transcendental art sets out with the aim of de-organicising the organic, i.e. of translating the mutable and conditional values of unconditional necessity. But such a necessity man is able to feel only in the great world beyond the living, in the world of the inorganic. This led him to rigid lines, to inert crystalline form. He translated everthing living into the language of these imperishable and unconditional values. For these abstract forms, liberated from all finiteness, are the only ones, and the highest, in which man can find rest from the conclusion of the world picture" (from M. Bullock, New York: International Universities Press, 1963, pp. 133-4).
For a relatively simple composition, the painting has tremendous tension and drama. The combination of Heckel's prismatic lines, the dynamism of the swaying trees reflected in the wet road, and the wonderful powdery dry surfaces of his paint give the work an extraordinary otherworldly beauty. Unlike so many Expressionist works of the Brücke period in Landstrasse Heckel orders his drama with great sophistication. This is Heckel at his best.
The acclaim that such commissions brought Heckel led to friendships with many of the other leading European avant-gardists. Amongst them these were pivotal, as his work developed out of the colourism of 1909-11 towards the more dynamic cloisonné forms of 1912-13. Leaving much of his Brücke past, Heckel came under the influence of Franz Marc and August Macke, who visited him in Berlin in late 1912, Lyonel Feininger and the Italian Futurists (fig. 2), who had a very succesful show at Howarth Walden's Galerie der Strum in 1912. What all of them offered Heckel was not simply colourism, but dynamism. Marc was fascinated by rayonnism and the concept of latent energy in all inanimate and animate forms, Feininger was interested in interpreting all figurative subjects in the new language of dynamic cubism, and the Italian Futurists persuaded their audience that every object had a latent kinetic energy which could be captured in paint.
With the benfit of hindsight, the demise of the Brücke moevement in May 1913 should have been a major backward step, perhaps even a catastrophe, for Kirchner and Heckel. In truth, the main protagonists, Kirchner and Heckel could not have been less concerned. In 1913 Kirchner was painting his finest oils, the Berlin Streetscenes and Heckel was painting with greater vivacity than ever before. 1913 was Heckel's greatest year. In 1913 he had his first one man show at Galerie Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin and painted a series of magnificent dynamic canvasses including Parksee (fig. 3) and Gläserner Tag now housed in the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst in Munich (fig. 4).
Heckel's new post Brücke style saw him replace the soft radiant lines of 1910 with the tough, angular dissecting lines of 1913. He strives to create shimmering prismatic light effects in his landscapes as a celebration of the latent energy of the natural world. The Italian Futurists, Balla and Boccioni, were striving to achieve a very similar effect in their works of 1912 and 1913. However, in Germany, Heckel was also paying lipservice to a particular philosophical view of the universe very much in vogue amongst contemporary German thinkers. Wilhelm Worringer wrote a treatise on art and transcendentalism in 1908 entitled "Abstraction and Empathy". A critical passage perfectly describes the present painting:
'All transcendental art sets out with the aim of de-organicising the organic, i.e. of translating the mutable and conditional values of unconditional necessity. But such a necessity man is able to feel only in the great world beyond the living, in the world of the inorganic. This led him to rigid lines, to inert crystalline form. He translated everthing living into the language of these imperishable and unconditional values. For these abstract forms, liberated from all finiteness, are the only ones, and the highest, in which man can find rest from the conclusion of the world picture" (from M. Bullock, New York: International Universities Press, 1963, pp. 133-4).
For a relatively simple composition, the painting has tremendous tension and drama. The combination of Heckel's prismatic lines, the dynamism of the swaying trees reflected in the wet road, and the wonderful powdery dry surfaces of his paint give the work an extraordinary otherworldly beauty. Unlike so many Expressionist works of the Brücke period in Landstrasse Heckel orders his drama with great sophistication. This is Heckel at his best.