Head of a Girl

Like other artists associated with the group of German Expressionists called Die Brücke (German for The Bridge), Max Pechstein wanted to capture a subjective emotionalism through the forms, colors, and material qualities of his paintings. In this pursuit, he felt a close affinity to traditional African and Oceanic art. In Head of a Girl, the intense colors of the painting and the rough shapes of the figure’s forms match the direct, unpolished quality of the paint application. This process includes a carefully built surface of bold paint strokes extensively reworked with transparent layers and textures and such unconventional techniques as scratching through wet paint to reveal the underlying canvas. By choosing to use an unfinished aesthetic for his work, Pechstein sought to convey a sense of raw emotion. Here, Pechstein depicts a dancer dressed in a leotard or stage costume, with hair set by a decorative comb and a large flower on her bodice. In such imagery of urban nightlife—dance halls, night clubs, theaters, and brothels—Pechstein equates the female form with primordial exuberance, freed of the banal conventions of upper-class European mores.