Untitled (plate, facing page 32) from Die Samländische Ode (The Samland Ode)
Max Pechstein
German, 1881–1955
1918 (executed 1917)
A lithograph from an illustrated book in which Max Pechstein renders two reclining bathers with bold, primitive line and texture to evoke the sensory presence of body and shore.
What strikes you is the raw, almost woodcut-like black handling—two simplified, weighty figures laid one above the other against a restless band of textured marks that read as sea and sky, the paper itself active in the composition.
Executed during the height of German Expressionism, this plate translates the movement’s primitivist, bodily immediacy into the medium of print, helping to carry modernist concerns from easel painting into widely reproducible illustrated books.
Medium
Lithograph from an illustrated book with twenty one lithographs
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 12 13/16 x 11 5/16" (32.5 x 28.7 cm); page: 20 1/16 x 14 7/8" (51 x 37.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of R. Kirk Askew, Jr.
Accession
145.1945.19
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
