Lot 243 Dα

It is not known precisely at what point in 1911 Otto Mueller was accepted into the Brücke group of artists. During that year his colleague Erich Heckel spoke about a painting that he owned by Mueller: “Very light, the paint applied thinly, placed boldly on the surface, his own distinctive mathematical principles and his sensual sensitivity already palpable” (cited in exhib. cat. Otto Mueller. Eine Retrospektive, Hypo-Kulturstiftung Munich 2003, p. 49).
From then on, these friends and painters worked and travelled together, conquering their own realm of motifs. Heckel, Kirchner, Pechstein and Schmidt-Rottluff also directed their attention to extroverted themes like life in the metropolis of Berlin; however, Mueller primarily concentrated on the description of mostly nude figures in a natural setting - this would become iconic, something like his trademark. The deliberate reduction of form, expression and particularly his palette in terms of tonal values and texture indicate Mueller's wish to create “primal paintings”, as has been supposed by Mario von Lüttichau (exhib. cat. Munich 2003, op. cit., p. 67).
While these usually consisted of androgynous nudes, as is also the case in the present large-format watercolour, they were generally outlined with bold contours in the 1910s. This conveys a meticulously composed pictorial structure. Our motif is typical in this regard, although it is striking that the contour lines have been replaced by delicate lines for the sake of the picture's harmonious impression. As though in paradise, the naked individual stands on equal terms with nature and seems to be one with it.