Girl in the meadow

Dora Koch-Stetter is one of the few notable artists of Classical Modernism who resided on Fischland from the time of the Weimar Republic until her death. Together with her husband Fritz Koch-Gotha, she was firmly integrated into the Ahrenshoop artistic universe at the latest since their settlement in Althagen in 1927. There were good relations with Franz Triebsch, with whom Koch Gotha lived in close proximity in Berlin and who is usually still counted among the first generation of the artists' colony. But there were also good relations in the 1920s and 30s with Lieselotte Dross, with Hermann Abeking, who portrayed the colleague Fritz Koch-Gotha, with Gerhard Marcks - the neighbour in Niehagen - and probably also with the close Marcks friend Alfred Partikel. In 1911 she was in Ahrenshoop-Althagen for the first time and painted the "Red House" in Bernhard-Seitz-Weg.

As a Berliner, the young Dora Stetter found herself in Germany's liveliest art metropolis at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Lovis Corinth, her teacher from 1903 to 1904, had moved from Munich to Berlin to be among like-minded people in the Berlin Secession, founded in 1898. Dora Stetter, a generation younger, took an early step into Expressionist Modernism. The Romanian Arthur Segal, with whom she studied in 1910, was a peer and member of Berlin's New Secession, which at the time was rebelling against the now established old Secession. It is not known that Dora Stetter saw in these male-dominated artists' associations an environment that suited her and tried to gain a foothold there. Instead, she was organised over a long period of time - like Anna Gerresheim and Elisabeth von Eicken - in the Association of Berlin Women Artists.

Dora Koch-Stetter's creative peak was in the period before the First World War until about 1915 and again in the 1920s. Her interest in portraiture was great and her ability to create typical postures and facial expressions entirely out of light and colour was pronounced. The sitters are people from their surroundings, mostly women and children, an unpretentious company of friends, family members, people from the village, strong in expression, free of poses. Do, "Little Lisa", sitting in the grass, is touched by the oblivious grace with which she surrenders to the scent of the meadow, the hum of insects and the sun.