August Macke [Girls Under Trees] 1914

◧ Artist: August Macke (1887 - 1914)
◧ Country: Germany
◧ Title: [Girls Under Trees]
◧ Medium: Oil painting on canvas
◧ Painting Size: 119.5 x 159 cm (47.05" x 62.6")

◧ Museum: Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germnay

(Click to visit the museum)

◧ Country of Stamp Issue: Germany
◧ Date of Issue: August 16, 1974
◧ Face Value: 30 German Pfennig
◧ Issued as a part of "German Expressionist Paintings" series

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The two groups of three "girls under trees" are depicted in an everyday present without any mythological allusion. This everyday life always seems to be transfigured into cheerful festivity by Macke's blaze of colors.

Painting as a feast for the eyes, based on the motif in the forms of life in the immediate present, that is the main feature of Macke's almost Arcadian painting. Such a blooming color here is what defines Macke's special position in the Blue Rider circle and is inconceivable without Robert Delaunay's role model. Delaunay's theory of simultaneous color contrasts was groundbreaking for Macke.

In our picture on the edge of the fountain on the far right, the jug made of contrasting colored discs looks like an abstract demonstration figure. (the painting description from Pinakothek Der Moderne)