Chapter Five: Classic subject – Bathers
Under observation
Looking at this painting, we participate in the scene and yet remain outside it. This ambivalent attitude is typical of works by Mueller that figure bathers in natural setting.
“The days were unforgettably beautiful.” (Emmy Mueller)
Maschka, Otto and his sisters made their first trip to Fehmarn Island in the summer of 1908, and this is when the artist began painting bathers.
Such works decisively contributed to the development of his personal style, which includes strongly typified figures, landscapes with similar items, and people and sites without specific details.
Clear artistic limits, radically painted surfaces and sharp lines further characterise Otto Mueller’s style.
Using matt colours to intensify the impression generated by his works, he endeavoured to achieve pictorial harmony through balanced compositions and careful positioning of the figures.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner once stated with enthusiasm: “He thought us the magic of distemper.”
View from above
Kirchner also stayed on Fehmarn Island in 1908, but the two artists did not know each other at that time. His painting presented here figures a lively bathing scene on the island seen from above.
In the centre of the composition, a clothed figure with a pipe in his hand observes the unclothed bathers.
Who might Kirchner have depicted here?
Freiheit am Wasser
Chapters: More about Otto Mueller
Basic concept – Close to nature
A constant – Partners
Contours – Biography
Colonialism – Black German history
Context – Romani people
Kaleidoscope – Viewpoint
