Lot 13 Dα

“Leistikow already [turned] his back on people, never to pursue them again with his art. Because the landscape itself comes alive, it has that deep silence that all good landscapes have and within which people would signify a highly disruptive lifelessness. (…) Leistikow frees himself from them because he feels he is […] called to create not vedute but an authentic, soulful landscape that breathes in the rhythm of nature and moves under its own power” (Oscar Bie, Walter Leistikow, in: Kunst und Künstler 2 (1904), p. 260 f.; cited in: Tobias Hoffmann (ed.), Landschaft zwischen Impressionismus und Expressionismus. Meisterwerke von Hagemeister und Leistikow, exh. cat. Bröhan Museum, Berlin 2017, n.p.).
There is scarcely another artist with the same ability as Walter Leistikow, a co-founder of the Berlin Secession, to translate the characteristic landscape of the March of Brandenburg directly north of the metropolis of Berlin - with its numerous rivers, lakes and pine and birch forests - into atmospheric images evoking a sense of longing. Always devoid of people and often immersed in the soft evening light of the setting sun, his paintings convey a hint of melancholy, not least through the silvery reflections on the surface of their water. Unlike his fellow painters Liebermann and Slevogt, a distant echo of German romanticism still seems to be present in Leistikow's work and a certain spiritual affinity with the Scandinavian landscape painters of the turn of the century seems recognisable.