Lot 221a D

Erich Heckel was an artist who thoroughly enjoyed travelling. Accordingly, depictions of landscapes were always of key significance in his oeuvre. These journeys repeatedly provided Heckel with occasions to visually capture what he saw in expansive views of landscapes and towns. The Nahe valley landscape depicted here must have captivated Heckel not only as a motif, but also formally and compositionally. Seen from a bird's-eye view, our gaze glides along the charming and - so to speak - lyrically concentrated scenery of the Nahe valley, featuring the romantic town of Bad Münster. Like a pattern made up of fields of colour, we see historical houses and vineyards, surrounded by the impressive rock formations of the Rheingrafenstein and the Rotenfels. At the top, the composition is concluded by a bizarre cloudscape, which clearly displays an abstract tendency. The harmony of the foreground is ruptured in order to provide the scene with a powerful vitality and in order to heighten its expressive form to the level of the dramatic. The very idiosyncratic, seemingly elastic, concave extension of the three-dimensional space lacking any perspectival structure is characteristic of Heckel's approach, a stylistic device from the Expressionist period of his oeuvre. Both the device of foreshortening and the dualism between a cheerful vitality and a dramatic quality define the unique character of this landscape painting.
Heckel's idea was not an illusionistic image, not an imitation of nature, but rather the establishment of a connection between the landscape, the laws inherent within it and the artist's personal sensibility. Through his questioning of reality and fiction, he knew how to express his concept of art in a creative and authentic manner. Pursuing his Expressionist aspirations, Heckel strove to achieve truthfulness and an artistic form of expression charged with inner feelings.