KOLLER VIEW 4/23

9 © Pechstein Hamburg/Toekendorf / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich © 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich Alfons Walde Alfons Walde had a great love of the snow-covered Ty- rolean Alps and Kitzbühel. Born in the Tyrol, the fami- ly moved to Kitzbühel when he was still very young. A passionate skier and mountain guide, he knew the Ty- rolean landscape very well. As early as the 1920s, Walde established himself as a renowned ‘mountain painter’, and was able to acquire commissions from art lovers and collectors. Walde’s paintings are not only impres- sive depictions of the Tyrolean Alps, but also profound reflections on the intimate connection between man and nature. AlfonsWalde (1891–1958). Skiers in amountain pasture. 1933. Oil on board. 42 × 59 cm. Estimate: CHF 250 000/350 000 Giovanni Giacometti This harmoniously composed work, layered in depth, exemplifies Giacomet- ti’s masterful way of capturing the characteristic light of the mountain ranges and colourful flower meadows of the Val Bregaglia. In this painting the Sciora group rises in steep granite slopes to over 3000 metres, with the Sciora Da- fora, the Ago di Sciora and the Sciora Dadent, whose snow-covered peaks stand out against the sky in the background. With his landscape paintings in particular, Giovanni Giacometti earned his place among the leading Swiss ar- tists of his time and continued the traditions that had emerged from Impres- sionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism with his own, mainly colouristic innovations. At the same time, his life and body of work reflect the intense and lifelong connection of his successful artistic family to their place of origin, Stampa, and to the entire Val Bregaglia. Giovanni Giacometti (1868–1933). Mountain landscape. 1931. Oil on canvas. 75.5 × 80 cm. Estimate: CHF 180 000/280 000 Hermann Max Pechstein The search for the rural idyll was of great importance to the circle of Ger- man Expressionists that included Hermann Max Pechstein. In the years after 1900, they often painted at the artists’ colony of Nidden in Pomerania, where Pechstein and other ‘Brücke’ artists found a fertile environment for their art. Pechstein felt a special affinity with the local landscape and inhabitants and returned there several times between 1927 and 1930. This work, in which the intense, light-flooded yellow, beige and ochre tones of the dunes merge in wave-like movements with the lush green of the grasses and bushes, was painted during this period. Hermann Max Pechstein (1881–1955). Landscape (houses in dunes). 1927. Oil on canvas. 70.5 × 80.5 cm. Estimate: CHF 100 000/150 000