Otto Mueller: Girls Bathing
Around 1920, distemper on gunny, 100 x 67,5 cm Otto Mueller, born 1874 in Liebau, Silesia, died 1930 in Breslau
The coloration of the painting is reduced to a few subdued basic tones – incarnadine, blue and green – and adheres more to Naturalism, unlike Kirchner. Muellers lines are sharp and angular, his brush strokes vehement and sketch-like. As is frequently found among the Expressionists, the contours are rendered in blue, the color layered in broad surfaces. The glue-based distemper – Mueller kept the mixture a strict secret – is sparingly applied, so that the picture ground, a rough canvas of gunny, is able to set its own accents.
Otto Mueller on his artistic ambitions: "...to express the sensations of landscape and people with the greatest possible simplicity; in my craft, I seek to emulate the art of the Egyptians." (O. Mueller, 1919)
