Hermann Max Pechstein Lot n° 45

Hermann Max Pechstein Flowering Cornfield 1928 Oil on canvas. 53.3 x 63.5 cm. Framed. Signed and dated 'HMPechstein 1928' in black lower right. Signed, titled and with address 'Blühendes Korn/ HMPechstein/ Berlin W.62./ Kurfürstenstr. 126' verso. - In very good, color-fresh condition. Soika 1928/12 (black and white image, location unknown) Provenance Private collection Baden-Württemberg; Math. Lempertz'sche Kunstversteigerung 491, Cologne, 8/9.12.1966, lot 542; Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia The painting "Blühendes Kornfeld" belongs to a series of late landscape paintings that the Brücke painter Max Pechstein created in the 1920s during his summer sojourns in Pomerania. After he was no longer able to travel to his beloved Nidden for political reasons, he initially found a new and peaceful environment in Leba and later in Rowe on Lake Garde in the district of Stolp, which, as he wrote, was "not overrun by painters, tourists and bathers" (cited in Soika 2011, p. 72). In the years from 1921 to around 1933, these original places became Pechstein's second home and inspired him to create a large number of landscapes, seascapes and pictures of people at their simple activities. When Pechstein planned to go back to Rowe to paint in 1928, he invited his friend, the painter Alexander Gerbig, there and enthused: "It is a very remote nest, but a wonderful landscape and, above all, you can walk around there as you please, completely uninhibited" (ibid., p. 79). That summer he also created two paintings of cornfields in bloom. Pechstein must have placed his canvas directly in front of the field, as the tall stalks obscure the view and only reveal a narrow strip of sky. With confident brushstrokes, he sketched the lush green ears of corn, which blur into a sea of ripe flowers towards the horizon.