Description

When Max Pechstein created this print, he had recently spent several months in Paris and was enthralled with the artist Henri Matisse and the Fauves, whose painterly works emphasized brilliant color. The circling ring of blue dancers aligns with the Expressionists’ emphasis on the ability of nature to call up primal emotions such as joy. Pechstein printed the black lines from a lithographic stone, and then painted the colors on the same stone before transferring them to the paper with hand-applied pressure. This lithograph appeared in Die Brücke’s final yearbook, or annual print portfolio, published in 1912.