Max Pechsteinartist • painter • watercolourist • draughtsmanZwickau (Duitsland) 1881-1955 Berlijn

From an early age 'Max' Pechstein was never in any doubt that he wanted to do anything other than paint. He first attended Dresden’s School of Arts and Crafts and then the city’s Academy of Art. In 1906 he became a member of Die Brücke, the expressionist artists group. In 1908 Pechstein moved to Berlin, where he was to play a major role in the city’s artistic scene. Following a stay on the Palau Islands in the Pacific in1914, his work then showed the lasting impact of the naïve art he encountered there. He partly abandoned perspective space, working with powerful forms and unadulterated contrasting colour. Pechstein’s forte were landscapes and still lifes, never worked out in exact detail. After 1921 he spent virtually every summer in Leba on the Baltic Coast, where he made sea, coastal and harbour views as well as depictions of working fishermen.