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Landscape

Maker (German, 1896-1945)
Datecirca 1920
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions28 x 32 in. (71.1 x 81.3 cm)
Framed: 34 7/8 × 38 15/16 in. (88.6 × 98.9 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions
Object number2008.15
Object TypePaintings
On View
Not on view
Max Dungert was a leading member of the German artistic association and exhibiting society Die Novembergruppe (The November Group), which brought together young socialist-minded artists, architects, writers, and composers representing a wide range of styles during the new Weimar Republic in the years around 1920. Until Die Novembergruppe was banned by the newly elected National Socialist government in 1933, its approximately 120 members dominated artistic life in Berlin.

The artists of Die Novembergruppe created a distinctive post-Expressionist style that captured the manic excitement and destabilizing anxieties that beset post–World War I Germany. This untitled mountain landscape from around 1920 is an especially appealing example—lodged between prewar Expressionism and the brutal figuration of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) that rose to national prominence around 1925. The work offers a richly nuanced example of expressionistic landscape painting. It has unnatural color and distorted forms that reflect the influence of prewar Expressionism while the Cubist geometrics and Futurist dynamism define the angular structures of mountains, tree limb, boat with a mast, and rustic cottage or barn in the right foreground. These diverse formal elements fed into a new style often referred to as Cubo-Expressionism or Cubo-Futurism. Dungert’s compositional elements relate dynamically to works by Franz Marc (1880–1916), Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) (Accession no. 2003.101), E. L. Kirchner (1880–1938) (Accession no. 2002.70), among others—in a process of creative borrowing that is unique to Dungert’s individual style around 1920. Early paintings such as this one are rare, as Dungert’s Berlin studio was destroyed at the end of World War II.
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