Biography
Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein (1881–1955) was a German painter and printmaker whose bold colour and simplified form made him central to Expressionism. Born in Zwickau, he trained as a decorative painter before studying in Dresden and joining Die Brücke in 1906, becoming its only member with formal academic training. His encounters with Paris, Fauvism and non-European art intensified his interest in vivid colour, flattened space and direct emotional expression. Pechstein painted bathers, fishermen, Baltic landscapes, nudes and South Pacific subjects, including works inspired by his 1914 journey to Palau. After moving to Berlin, he helped spread Expressionism through exhibitions and printmaking, later teaching at the Berlin Academy. Under the Nazi regime, he was dismissed, banned from exhibiting and had hundreds of works removed from museums as “degenerate.” After 1945, he returned to teaching, leaving a powerful legacy in German modernism.