The 1911 annual bonus contains three prints by Heckel, with Max Pechstein providing the cover this time. Compared to the Kirchner portfolio with the yellow signal color from the previous year, the cover by Pechstein for Heckel's own annual portfolio in 1911 appears rather restrained in a calming blue-violet. Pechstein's woodcut "Kniender Akt mit Schale“ (Kneeling Nude with Bowl) with the two large arched forms is probably an allusion to Heckel's color woodcut "Liegende" from 1909 with the same model (fig).
With the color woodcut "Stehendes Kind" in black, red, and green, Heckel, like Kirchner before him with the sheet "Badende mit Schilf werfende" ("Bathers Throwing with Reeds"), also set a striking example. With the sharply contoured figure in front of the two-dimensional landscape scene, Heckel recalled his examination of "Etruscan art" during his trip to Italy in 1909. Kirchner specifically noted this "stimulus", which had a lasting effect on all the artists, in the 1913 chronicle of 1913. (p. 104) And Kirchner himself recalled the creation of this color woodcut in a postcard he sent to Maschka, the wife of Otto Mueller, on February 3, 1911, noting "Our youngest at the dance". (P. 59 top and cf. Evening Sale on December 9, 2022).
In a confident pose, her gaze directed slightly over her shoulder at her draftsman, her left hand resting on her bent thigh, Heckel freezes Fränzi in front of the wall decoration in his studio, reproducing an ideal Tuscan landscape with gentle hills and pine trees. Constructed from three sawed up forms, Heckel, in contrast to Kirchner's painterly woodblock prints, avoids any overlapping colors, puts emphasis on surface and contour, and, as is the case with the sitter's body, incorporates the white of the paper into the composition.
Heckel's following lithograph "Szene im Wald, Akte in Waldlichtung" (Scene in the Forest, Nudes on a Clearing), reflects an experience at the Moritzburg Ponds, a space shaped by nature where the models rest after bathing. Especially the depiction of nudes by the water or in the forest have become the epitome of the artists' expressionist heyday. The unconstrained nudity is an expression of a liberation from inner constraints, which also becomes visible in their creations. Nature and man form a desired unity that is strikingly conveyed to the viewer. In seclusion they can live out their idea of a simple, "primitive" life.
For the third sheet in the portfolio "Straße am Hafen-Hamburg", Heckel made etching the technique of his choice. Passers-by on a wide avenue in front of multi-story houses approach us on the left; on the other side pedestrians hurry in opposite direction. There is a wide water with ships and a bridge in the distant background. Is this a Hamburg depiction? Stephan von Wiese doubts this and suspects a Berlin Spree landscape with arches. (Cf. Stephan von Wiese, Die Jahresmappen, in: Archiv-Heft 17, Berlin 1989, p. 39) [MvL].