Lot 207 D

Heckel has painted a nude seen from behind on a wide sandy beach in front of a fanciful, steeply inclined coast. This watercolour carried out in generous brushstrokes was dated 1912 by the artist and (presumably at a later time) entitled “Vorm Bade” underneath his signature. Like every summer Heckel painted landscapes, and frequently nudes and bathers, as is also the case with this picturesque Baltic beach on Hiddensee. Travelling from Berlin with his wife, the dancer Sidi Riha, Heckel spent the summer months there: here, with her back to her husband, Riha is surely about to plunge into the blue, slightly reflective sea after a few more steps. This distinctive landscape, with the steep sand dunes in the background piled up into the sky, takes the form of a magnificent setting in the warm light of the sun.
Erich Heckel had changed his style of painting compared to the period in Dresden and subsequently in Berlin, from 1911 onwards. He distanced himself from an all-too expressive, a wild and direct, spontaneous presentation. Heckel's holistic view of nature, his yearning for harmony and his idea of using things to permit the ineffable to shimmer through them is characteristically and particularly palpable in many passages of this watercolour. A classic motif of the artist, a nude - obviously turned inward and absorbed in thought - on the coast of this beloved island, north of Stralsund in the Baltic Sea, leaves us behind, beyond what can be seen. Franz Marc had already described Heckel's pictures to Wassily Kandinsky in 1912: “The art of Heckel is very secretive, with a very devout and deep meaning, which is more the subtle echo - or to put it more precisely - the mental resonance of that which we experience completely only before the canvas; he scares us off to take better hold of us afterwards.” (Franz Marc to Wassily Kandinsky on 18 January 1912, in: Wassily Kandinsky Franz Marc Briefwechsel, ed. by Klaus Lankheit, Munich 1983, p. 122).