Walkers along the Grunewald Lake

In the autumn of 1911 Erich Heckel moved from Dresden to Berlin, following other members of the artists' group Die Brücke such as Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who had already settled in the city. Moving from the Elbe to the Spree meant not only personal changes but also influenced his painting style. Among the first of his paintings made in Berlin is Walkers along the Grunewaldsee. Viewers look over a tree trunk, in a luminous yellow black, and spreading branches, the intensive blue of the water, the green of the bank and its reflection in the water in a restless rhythm. All details are drawn with simple contours and broadly colored fields lending the scene, also imaginable as tranquil idyll, a certain rawness.