Artwork Details
15-3/4 x 12-5/8 in. (image) 19-1/2 x 13-3/4 in. (sheet)
Mark DescriptionSigned in pencil, below image, l.r.: Pechstein
Accession NumberGift of Joan and Walter Wolf
CopyrightPrints, Drawings, and Photographs
Color PaletteAlbert P. Strietmann; given to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1951, deaccessioned in 1996; sale at (Christie's, New York, New York) in 1999;{1} Walter Wolf, Indianapolis, Indiana; given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2016. {1} Christie's, New York, Old Master, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Prints, 4 May 1999, lot no. 477.
- With its angular shapes and strong contrasts of light and dark, the face of this elderly fisherman shows the power of Pechstein’s graphic work. His eyes stare from triangular sockets above cheeks of sharply cut planes and a jagged beard.
- Arguably the most dramatic of Pechstein’s series of 11 portraits of fishermen, this print is a prime example of the woodcuts made by the German Expressionist artists active from about 1905 to 1925. They were devoted to conveying the bare emotions of the human condition, and the woodcut, with its rough-hewn, stark effects, was well suited to their intense expressions.
- Pechstein was a distinguished teacher and political activist. Named one of Hitler’s “degenerate artists,” he was not allowed to work during the Nazi era.
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