Erich Heckel

Woodcut printed in black, green, blue and light grey, 1912, signed and dated in pencil, the fourth (final state), presumably from the unnumbered edition of 80, on heavy Japan paper, printed by J.B. Neumann, Berlin, framed

Annemarie & Wolf-Dieter Dube, Erich Heckel - Das Graphische Werk, Band I Holzschnitte, New York, 1964, no.242, illustrated (another example).

With wide (full?) margins, in good condition apart from a diagonal crease in the upper margin extending 22 cm just to the tip of the upper left corner of the image (only visible in a raking light), a small pressure mark in the upper part of the image on the black borderline, some minor creasing and a few handling marks in the margins, very pale light- and mount-staining, traces of moisture staining at the extreme lower and right sheet edges (well away from the image), small areas of light skinning along the left, upper and right sheet edges, framed.
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Weisse Pferde is widely considered to be one of Erich Heckel’s most masterful colour woodcuts. The artist created the work in 1912; a year that saw Heckel visit his fellow Expressionist, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, on the island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea. Around this time, Kirchner described the island as follows: ‘Ochre, blue, and green are the colours of Fehmarn, a wonderful coast formation often of South Sea opulence, absurd flowers with fat stems…’ (quoted in Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, HUP, Cambridge, 1968, p.24). Kirchner’s reflection could almost directly describe this composition, and given the timing of Heckel’s visit to the island, scholars have posited that Weisse Pferde pictures or imagines a scene on the Baltic island.

The work depicts two men leading a pair of horses; they are apparently about to meet a third protagonist, who moves hastily towards the riders. Each of the figures is pictured in a simplified form and with his back to the viewer. They thereby impede analysis of emotive, human content, and one is instead encouraged to focus on the vital and untamed atmosphere that the work exudes.

Jaklyn Babington provides a compelling reading of the work’s subject matter: ‘It was during this year [1912] that Heckel met the leading artists of the Munich-based artists group Der Blaue Reiter … Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. Marc, in particular, viewed the horse as a symbol of energy and strength and had adopted this motif as the major theme in his work. The unusual appearance of the horse in Heckel’s Weisse Pferde, in combination with the meeting of three figures, can be interpreted as a momentary fusion of the ideas of two revolutionary artist groups: Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke’ (Artonview, National Gallery of Australia).

To create the work, Heckel carved two woodblocks: one for the black components of the image and the other for the coloured areas. The artist then painted each colour directly onto the second woodblock. The composition thus combines the softer, more differentiated and uninhibited qualities of painting with the bold and flat, graphic immediacy that is inherent to the medium of woodcutting. As Kristin Makholm puts it: ‘Graphic and painterly qualities are thoroughly unified in this extraordinary colour woodcut by Erich Heckel.’ Significantly, Heckel’s technique in creating Weisse Pferde endowed each impression of the subject with a singular character. Makholm continues: ‘because [the artist] applied the colours differently every time, Heckel relinquished all uniformity from one impression to the next, creating a body of virtually unique prints.’ (Prints in Germany 1905-1923, Saint Louis, 1993, p.34).