Hermann Max Pechstein

The reverse side depicts a sleeping boy.

The present work belongs to a series of dramatic colorist landscapes that Pechstein executed in 1921-22. Following the partition of Germany after the Versailles treaty, the village of Nidden found itself outside of the German border, in Lithuania. Having been forced to abandon his favorite summer resort that gave him an endless source of inspiration, Pechstein began a search for a new landscape in which to paint. He set out on his quest with a rucksack and a map in April 1921, and finally settled in Leba, where he was mostly surrounded by fishermen and their families. Strassenszene, like other Leba paintings, represents a wild burst of colors spilling outwards from the sun in the center of the composition. The warm tones ranging rom yellow to red spread from the sun disc like a volcanic eruption, and are contrated by the deep blue hues of the houses on the sides, and the green of the foreground.

As Max Osborn observed, light became the decisive force in Pechstein's Leba works: 'He painted glowing sunsets or afternoons when the heavenly body spreads its light like arrows over the landscape. He wants to capture the pulsating brightness, the interweaving of the blinding light and the wonderful clear air, or the filtering effect that occurs throught the humid atmospheric veil. it evokes an impressionist theme, but the execution is entirely different. There is nothing analysed, nothing dissolved into a maze of details. Rather, the artist dares to depict the rays of the sun as strong as thick lines, almost stamped into the picture (...). The whole series of Leba pictures allows us to observe a new development. The colourful expresision has kept its layered flatness, but it is richer, and more lively in its structure. A stream of atmospheric and luminous elements floods into the landscape and merges with the local colors.' (Max Osborn, Max Pechstein, Berlin, 1922, translated from the German)