Lot 257 D

After productive stays in Italy in 1907, 1911 and 1913, Pechstein was not able to find a way to travel there again until 1924. Together with his wife, he lived for almost two months in Monterosso al Mare, a Ligurian fishing village that was still relatively free of tourists at that time. He found an inexhaustible abundance of motifs in the everyday life of the common people: fishermen, donkey drivers, washerwomen and porters. Pechstein created numerous drawings and oil sketches there and then developed this material in paintings and works on paper after he returned to Berlin.
These works also include the watercolour presented here, “Durst I”. Compositionally, the subject of sailors and fishermen standing on the beach and quenching their thirst with water from large clay jugs is carefully balanced. The centre of the picture is dominated by the figure of a fisherman who is wearing nothing but short white trousers and has a sunburnt upper body; with his head thrown back he drinks greedily out of a wide-bellied clay container. He is flanked on either side by two densely packed groups, each consisting of three men. Among these sailors and fishermen, Pechstein cycles through a very diverse range of views, from profile and three-quarter figures to those seen from behind. In their motif-related dynamism, the groups stand in direct contrast to the statuesque and isolated appearance of the drinking figure. Two other pairs of figures and several fishing boats can be recognised behind them, in the upper third of the picture plane. The image's steeply layered composition and the extremely elevated horizon line are to be found in many of Pechstein's works from Monterosso.