82.146 Woman (Liegende)

1913

Color woodcut, sheet: 14 1/2 x 8 3/4" (36.8 x 21.2 cm); composition: 7 1/2 x 4 1/4" (18.1 x 10.5 cm)

Signed, lr: Erich Heckel 13

Part of the Ganymed-Mappe nr. 3, published by Julius Meier-Graefe, directed by Wilhelm Hausenstein, for Marées-Gesellschaft, Winter 1924, Nr. 8 of set

Provenance: Dr. F. Graefe, Berlin

In his article relating his experiences with Heckel in a Red Cross medical unit during World War I, the Berlin artists Max Kaus gives a marvelous description of how a group of artists, and especially Heckel, were able to continue artistic work during the war. Their medical unit, which also included Anton Kerschbaumer and Otto Herbig, was stationed on the coast of Flanders, a few miles from the resort of Ostende. Their quarters were in one of the seaside hotels, where they were able to arrange very comfortable accommodations. As Kaus writes: “Aside from our duties as orderlies, which of course remained the major task, it was possible- mostly because of the very carefully planned duty roster made out by Heckel as Section Chief- to draw and paint. The fighting on the front- which was only a few miles from us, near Ostende in Middelkerke- was sometimes heavy but sometimes nearly still; indeed, true trench warfare with attacks and pauses… In between there were many days and nights of relative clam, and Heckel, who was always active, served as a role-model in his effective use of this time… In the evenings when duty allowed we came together in one of the rooms… One looked at what had been drawn and what lithographs and woodcuts had been made. Heckel and I had been able to get some stones, printing ink and paper from a printing press in Bruges. The lithographer had nothing to do, he gave us his tools and even some good printing tips. Heckel made many woodcuts and lithographs at this time… There were good pieces of wood to be had, indeed the best Tabasco mahogany from Ostende’s bombed-out train station. The tables and benches of the waiting room gave us enough wood for many woodcuts. Printing was done with the most primitive means, with a bookbinder’s folder, bits of leather put on the rubber, and pressed on the back with spoons. The colors were added with hand-made tampers and photo-rollers. Heckel, who despite these primitive methods always made very clean prints, did several well-known woodcuts of the wounded, the so-called ‘Ostende Madonna” and landscapes. It was for him a very productive time…”

One of the works he did during the war was this scene of soldiers bathing. As Kaus remembers, “On summer days we even went swimming, when we could get away from duty. If we had only a short time, we went directly to the Ostende beach, or we traveled with the narrow-gauge railway to Venduyne and Den Haan, where the most beautiful sand and high dunes were. We drew bathing soldiers on the beach. Heckel was inexhaustible and took advantage of every spare moment to draw”

In style, this work is reminiscent of his earlier studies of nudes at the Mortizburg Lakes, where he worked with the other Brucke artists from 1909 to 1911. The characteristic jagged lines to indicate the dunes, and the allusion to the prismatic effect of light on the water indicate Heckel’s continued desire, even under less than idyllic circumstances, to depict man in harmony with nature.

In a letter to the art historian Walker Kaesbach on July 2, 1916, Heckel mentions this lithograph in an interesting context: the artists James Ensor (1860-1949), who served as an inspiration for so many Expressionists, lived in nearby Ostende. On his trips to the town, Heckel would often visit this eccentric old man. On one of these visits, he tells Kaesbach, he gave Ensor a copy of this lithograph- a gift that greatly pleased the older artist. In the same letter- and in others throughout the summer of 1916- Heckel did not speak of the war, but talked instead about setting up his studio, and told of trips to Ostende and Brussels where, he said, “the atmosphere is quite liberating”

Hecke was one of the first of the Bruke artists to experiment with the color woodcut. In Liegnede, he used his most characteristic graphic technique to depict one of his most common themes at the time. The figure of a sleeping woman appears as a positive form- that is, as an object produced out of jagged black lines- placed against the negative space of the background. Heckel heightens the dramatic integration of the figure and the background by adding red as an enveloping form around the figure. Just as the other Brucke artists manipulated the surface of the material for powerful effect, Heckel here allows the wood grain to be visible.

Heckel had earlier done a drawing of a similar figure, in which one has a greater awareness of the spatial relations between the figure and the surface. Heckel certainly intended to spatial ambiguity of the woodcut, in which the figure appears to float somnambulantly in a red sea.

Along with the other artist of Die Brucke, Heckel often depicted scenes from the circus and from cabaret life. Such themes offered the artists a chance to express their affinity with “outsiders,” with the artistic world outside the strictures of bourgeois life. As had been the case with artists from Daumier to Picasso, the circus served Heckel and the other Expressionists as a source of visual metaphors for the pathos or tragedy of life.

In this case, Heckel gave a “slice of life” view of an acrobat on stage- but one who is performing an elaborate contortion. Below the stage, the head and hands of the orchestra’s conductor and the top of a bass are visible- a compositional technique reminiscent of Dega’s interior views of Parisian night life. Heckel accentuates the acrobat’s grotesque form by depicting his shadow illuminated against the wall behind him.

Of further interest are the masks that serve as a frame to the stage. Masks are common to Expressionist works and are meant to express the artist’s growing appreciation for the energy and vitality of primitive art. By such allusions to “primitive” man, Expressionists further identified themselves as anti-bourgeois outsiders.