"Female Act" (1916) by Max Pechstein, limited lithograph on Japanese paper

As at that time, Max Pechstein is considered one of the most important representatives of German Expressionism. In spring 1906 he came across the artist group "Die Brücke" founded in the previous year from Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Bleyl. In addition to painting, a work with over 850 woodcuts, lithographs and etchings was created in the area of ​​the graphic. What Paul Gauguin Tahiti was for Max Pechstein the Baltic Sea coast: a paradise in which he found rest, but above all too much inspiration. Since 1909 he has traveled to Nidden several times at the Curonian Spit, where Lovis Corinth had already worked as a young art student more than a quarter of a century before. However, when the Versailles contracts put the Curonian Spit under Allied administration in 1920, the way there was blocked. According to his own words, Pechstein had to "go again in search of a stain of earth that was not overcrowded by painters, tourists and bathers". He found it in Leba, where from now on he regularly spent his summer.