Künstler

Max Pechstein

Title

Das gelbschwarze Trikot

Year
1910
Category
Material / Technique
Dimensions
Bildmaß 68,9 × 78 cm
Rahmenmaß 82,7 × 92,6 × 5,5 cm
Related Digital Projects
Related Albums
Acquisition details
Seit 1990 Dauerleihgabe aus Privatbesitz
Credits
Max Pechstein, Das gelbschwarze Trikot, 1910, Öl auf Leinwand, Brücke-Museum, Dauerleihgabe aus Privatbesitz, © Pechstein – Hamburg / Berlin; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Object Reference
Vorderseite von Im Wasser

Exhibitions (selection)

Literature (selection)

  • Senator für Wissenschaftund Kunst, Berlin (Hg.), Künstler der Brücke. Gemälde der Dresdener Jahre 1905 - 1910 , Ausst.-Kat. Brücke-Museum Berlin, Berlin 1973.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller, Das Brücke-Museum Berlin, Prestel, München 1996.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Brücke. La nascita dell´espressionismo, Ausst.-Kat. Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta Milan, Mazzotta, Milano 1999.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Die Brücke. Meisterwerke aus dem Brücke-Museum Berlin, Ausst.-Kat. Brücke-Museum Berlin, Hirmer Verlag, München 2000.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Max Pechstein im Brücke-Museum, Ausst.-Kat. Brücke-Museum Berlin / Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal / Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen - Schloss Gottorf/Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Hirmer Verlag, München 2001.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Auf der Suche nach dem Ursprünglichen. Mensch und Natur im Werk von Otto Mueller und den Künstlern der Brücke, Brücke-Archiv 21/2004, Hirmer Verlag, München 2004.

  • Javier Arnaldo, Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Brücke. Die Geburt des deutschen Expressionismus, Ausst.-Kat. Berlinische Galerie, Hirmer Verlag, München 2005.

  • Javier Arnaldo, Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Brücke. El nacimiento del expresionismo alemán, Ausst.-Kat. Museo Thyssen-Bornesza Madrid/Fundación Caja Madrid, Madrid 2005.

  • Brücke und Berlin. 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Ausst.-Kat. Neue Nationalgalerie, Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz, Nicolai, Berlin 2005.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Brücke-Museum Berlin, Malerei und Plastik. Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Bestände, Hirmer Verlag, München 2006.

  • Staatssekretär für kulturelle Angelegenheiten des Landes Berlin, André Schmitz (Hg.), Im Zentrum des Expressionismus. Erwerbungen und Ausstellungen des Brücke-Museums Berlin 1988 - 2013. Ein Jubiläumsband für Magdalena M. Moeller, Hirmer Verlag, München 2013.

  • Max Pechstein. Pionier der Moderne, Ausst.-Kat. Brücke-Museum, Hirmer Verlag, München 2015.

  • Magdalena M. Moeller (Hg.), Brücke Museum Highlights, Hirmer Verlag, München 2017.

  • Brücke-Museum, Lisa Marei Schmidt, Isabel Fischer (Hg.), 1910. Brücke. Kunst und Leben, ausstellungsbegleitende Zeitung, Brücke-Museum, Berlin 2022.

Details

Inscription/Signature
Monogrammiert unten links: HMP 1909 (Signatur)
Nicht bezeichnet (Bezeichnung)

Inventory Number
DL 1990/2

Catalog Number
Soika 1910/31

(Marwa)

Dear…,

I hope you’re well and enjoying the sun shining everywhere – everywhere but here that is, as here there is no sun and I live in greyness. Bright sunshine... I’m noticing how much I depend on it. The people on the streets there, people that notice all the little details. There I really feel my entire existence. No matter how they see me and might categorise me, judging by my appearance alone. Here I’m more invisible.

My visibility depends very much on where I am at a given time. Depends on counterparts who see me or do not want to see me, on the ideologies and political views of others. Whether I can even decide when and where I want to be visible or not is unclear to me. But I do want to be able to decide at some point.

I recently organised a workshop and I chose the painting Das gelbschwarze Trikot (The Yellow-Black Tricot) by Max Pechstein as a conversation piece. It was astonishing to see how long we could discuss it. It’s also really interesting to see how the connections we make for ourselves in the picture affect it. But it’s most interesting of all to notice how the truth of the image holds almost no sway over us at all.

Personally, I attached a lot of importance to the connections/relationships/contacts between the figures in the image. I think it might have something to do with my long-time preoccupation with connections between the history of art here and other places in the world. The figure in the foreground (front) – the figures in the background (back) – yellow-black (prison clothes, visible) – nude – red sky.

Why do we make art? Or rather, why do you make art?

The question has been on my mind and I’ve been trying to find an answer for some time now. I used to think I was making art to sort out my problems, to list them out, one by one. But I don’t know if that actually works at all.

What do you think? What do you change in the world or for yourself when you make art?

I think that when I’m making art, I’m playing with the rhythm of life, slowing everything down so that I can still manage to get some inkling of this life under capitalism. Slowly. Very slowly and once again from the beginning.

I also enjoy the times when I’m writing.

Questions come to mind when I look at that painting. What is true? What does truth mean? Who has it? Is there one truth? Is truth here like the one in Syria? Is truth here like the truth in Haiti?

Are truth and reality identical?

And thinking of art history, what is the truth? Because nearly all Arab artists are excluded from this history. What should I believe? What does that mean? Do we as artists not exist at all?

In a video interview with Fateh Almoudarres which can be watched as a documentary on Youtube, that innovator of Syrian art who died in 1999 says in a very romantic, dreamy voice that he “feels the bridge between Syria and the rest of the world.”

Where is this bridge? Is it only in his surrealist dreams?

Is the bridge a truth or more of an interpretation?

“I am besieged [...] but who is my attacker? I don’t know…” Almoudarres wonders.

For him, the bridge is a promise that he is not alone, that something connects him to the world. I titled the workshop “The Walled-Up Bridge”, by the way. ;-)

We need each other, but which is worth more? The individual or the collective?

The question has been on my mind because we humans, for the most part, tend to speak idealistically and act very selfishly. After a conversation with a friend I received a mail with a joke, its subject line “On the question of the collective”:
The Soviet social psychologist I. S. Kon told the following joke: “A professor was once asked: ‘What is more important, the collective or the personality?’ – ‘The collective, of course,’ the professor replied, ‘but only if it is made up of personalities. For the sum of ones [individual personalities] is a number that is always greater than one, whereas the sum of zeroes is always only zero.’”

More thoughts and questions come bit by bit.

All my best,

Marwa

(Marwa )
letter
(مروه )
(Aya Soika )
About the Work
(Sonja Eismann )
Visibility
(Anwar ) Eyes
00:27
(Anwar ) Yellow and Black
00:24
(Bassel ) Something different
00:48
(Rama ) Sky
00:27
(Dani ) Mood
00:10
(Kifan ) Winter
00:11
(Marwa ) Secret
00:37
Associations
00:48
Questions
00:15
Imprint