Fashion clothing store

Large bright showcase . 1912

The Fashion Store is one of the paintings Macke painted while he was in Hilterfingen on Lake Thun . Hilterfingen canvases, the result of the artist’s intensive work, are created in different styles. Along with lyrical scenes in the lap of nature, Macke painted with a clear geometric structure. They were affected by his fascination with “Simultaneous Windows” ^[1] Delaunay - a series of paintings exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1912, resulting from his experiments with color as a means of depicting movement and rhythms. "Windows" Delaunay exhibited in 1913 in the Berlin gallery "Storm" and made an indelible impression on Mack ^{[2] [3]} .

The “Fashion Store”, one of the first paintings where Macke, in his own way, processes Delaunay’s finds, belongs specifically to works with a clearly defined geometric structure. Without abandoning figurativeness, he forms the structure of the picture with the help of objects depicted on it. The theme of large glass surfaces has been developed by the artist since the end of 1912, when the painting “The Big Bright Showcase” ( German Großes helles Schaufenster ) was painted , where the influence of futurism is felt. All surfaces and objects depicted on the “Big Bright Showcase” are parallel to the plane of the canvas, the image is frontally deployed, facing the viewer, but already in the drawings made in 1913, a compositional construction of the Hilterfingen painting with a three-four-turn of figures appears ^[3] .

The source for the graphic motif was the indoor galleries of Ladenstrasse and the Promenade at Lake Tuna with city dwellers parading past elegant shop windows. Macke made a pencil sketch and painted it in oil, working on the balcony of the house on the lake, where he lived with his whole family ^[3] .

The composition used by Macke was adopted by Jan Thorne-Prikker . Macke told Franz Mark about the principle of building Thorn-Picker in a letter from 1910 ^[4] . Makke himself began to work according to the Thorn-Prikker method since 1912. The picture was divided into four equal vertical parts, and the extreme of them always remained equal to the height of the canvas. Diagonals drawn in all directions in the resulting parts served as links for the future composition, limiting the areas of individual colors. According to this scheme, the culmination of the composition is the right figure, located at the border of the extreme right side of the picture, and the extreme left figure is in the center of the canvas. The proportions of female figures are strictly verified, their waists are on the central horizontal axis. Thus, the artist achieves the harmonious placement of characters in space, balanced sustainable composition ^[3] .

The bright field of the right-hand window showcases the diagonals, rushing left deep, thereby preserving the feeling of a plane in the picture. The dark spots of the basement of the shop window and the hats displayed in it balance the wide diagonal of the base of the shop window on the left, the black skirt of the lady in the center, the passage designs in the shade. The subtle play of the basic blue-gray tones is enlivened by the shining colors - yellow, orange, red. Makke created a carefree and funny scene, her dreamy mood echoes the urban “paradise” captured on many canvases of the artist - a city not hostile to its inhabitants, like many representatives of expressionism, but an embodiment of “earthly paradise” ^[3] .

• August Macke und die frühe Moderne in Europa: [Katalog. Die Ausst. ...], Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst u. Kulturgeschichte, Münster, 18. Nov. 2001 - 17. Febr. 2000, Kunstmuseum Bonn , 14 März - Juni 2002 / Hrsg. vom Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst u. Kulturgeschichte, Münster. - Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 2001 .-- ISBN 3-7757-1146-5 .
• Moeller, Magdalena M. August Macke. - Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1988 .-- ISBN 3-7701-2209-7 .