15 Facts About Max Pechstein

Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and a member of the Die Brucke group.

Max Pechstein fought on the Western Front during World War I and his art was classified as Degenerate Art by the Nazis.

Max Pechstein first worked as a decorator in his home town before enrolling at the School of Applied Arts and then at the Royal Art Academy in Dresden, where he met the painter Otto Gussman and the architect Wilhelm Kreis.

Max Pechstein was the only member to have received formal art training.

Max Pechstein was an active member of the Brucke until 1910 and often worked alongside Brucke painters creating a homogeneous style of this period.

In 1907 Max Pechstein traveled to Italy to receive an award, and upon his return in 1908 spent time in Paris where he met the Fauvist painter Kees van Dongen whom he persuaded to join Die Brucke.

In 1912, after years of rising tensions, Max Pechstein was expelled from the Brucke after exhibiting some of his work in the aforementioned Berlin Secession all by himself and without paintings of other members of the Brucke.

Max Pechstein was sent to fight on the Western Front in 1916.

Max Pechstein was banned from painting or exhibiting his art and later that year was fired from his teaching position.

Max Pechstein was reinstated in 1945, and subsequently won numerous titles and awards for his work.

Many of Max Pechstein's collectors were Jews whose collections were seized by the Nazis or lost owing to Nazi persecution.

In July 2021, France decided to restitute to the heirs of Hugo Simon the Max Pechstein entitled Nus dans un paysage.

Max Pechstein was a prolific printmaker, producing 421 lithographs, 315 woodcuts and linocuts, and 165 intaglio prints, mostly etchings.

Max Pechstein was married to Charlotte Karpolat from 1911 until 1923 and later was married to Marta Moller.

Max Pechstein died in West Berlin and is buried in the Evangelischer Friedhof Alt-Schmargendorf in Berlin.