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In the summer of 1907 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff travelled to the North Sea just before Erich Heckel. As soon as he arrived in Dangast he hastened to write to his friend: "The region is marvellous, it all cries out to be painted."
Both artists fell in love with this place and continued to visit for a number of years, painting there the most important landscapes of the Die Brücke period. As happened with Heckel, the area around Oldenburg caused a strong impression on the young Schmidt-Rottluff, who years later, in 1921, recalled in a letter published by Peter Vergo (1992): "I feel closely connected to the landscape of Oldenburg, as if it were my home; in fact, more closely than I do to my own home."
Autumn Landscape, Oldenburg, painted in 1907 during Schmidt-Rottluff's first stay in Dangast with Heckel, is artistically very close to Heckel's The Brick Factory, Dangast. Both works show the closeness of style which characterised the work of the Die Brücke artists in their early paintings and also reveal the influence of Van Gogh, proving how Expressionism arose from previous artistic movements. The dense application of paint, the loose and agitated brushstrokes and the use of brilliant colours with very accentuated contrasts and applied directly without mixing, all recall Van Gogh. As well as Van Gogh, there is also the influence of the French Impressionists evident in Schmidt-Rottluff's interest in capturing the effects of light under the changing weather conditions. The title of the painting, which refers to a specific season of the year, is further proof of this.
In this landscape, which depicts a small rural house, Schmidt Rottluff's method of constructing space through colour is evident. He uses a palette which is reduced to a few basic colours -green, yellow, red and blue- which give the composition an intense emotional impact and which mark him out as a great colourist even at this early date. In a letter sent by Heckel to Peter Selz in 1952 (Selz, 1957), he acknowledges that, "It is difficult to decide what each of us gave to the other in terms of stimulus, because it was all very reciprocal and often shared...but what is clear is that Schmidt-Rottluff contributed the glowing and pure colour of Chemnitz."
Paloma Alarcó
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