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Lot Essay
Das rote Teeservice was painted around the time of Pechstein's return to Germany from his extensive travels in Asia, Indonesia, Micronesia and the United States. Displaying the domestic setting of a table seemingly laid out for tea but in fact artificially arranged solely for the purpose of the picture, this vibrant and colourful still life reflects the influence of Pechstein's wanderings in its forceful and celebratory concentration of colour.
Seeming to combine the precedents set by both Cézanne and Matisse in the field of still-life painting, Pechstein, in this work, has arranged the work almost solely in accordance with its colour contrasts, placing an oval blue table-cloth at the centre of a predominantly red composition. With an assortment of rich colourful fruit laid out across the undulating folds of the table cloth as if they were vibrant features in an exotic landscape, the artist imbues this otherwise unremarkable scene with an intensity and sense of the exotic that is perhaps reflective of the unique time in which it was made.
The Germany to which Pechstein returned after his exciting journeys amongst the islands of the South Seas was embroiled in a war which by this time had begun to stagnate. His homeland was blockaded by the Allied Navy and was beginning to suffer shortages. In its concentration on the sumptuous and exotic colours and forms of this still life, Pechstein appears to be revelling in the richness of this display, emphasising its sumptuousness and at the same time celebrating its warm domestic familiarity.
Seeming to combine the precedents set by both Cézanne and Matisse in the field of still-life painting, Pechstein, in this work, has arranged the work almost solely in accordance with its colour contrasts, placing an oval blue table-cloth at the centre of a predominantly red composition. With an assortment of rich colourful fruit laid out across the undulating folds of the table cloth as if they were vibrant features in an exotic landscape, the artist imbues this otherwise unremarkable scene with an intensity and sense of the exotic that is perhaps reflective of the unique time in which it was made.
The Germany to which Pechstein returned after his exciting journeys amongst the islands of the South Seas was embroiled in a war which by this time had begun to stagnate. His homeland was blockaded by the Allied Navy and was beginning to suffer shortages. In its concentration on the sumptuous and exotic colours and forms of this still life, Pechstein appears to be revelling in the richness of this display, emphasising its sumptuousness and at the same time celebrating its warm domestic familiarity.