Heckel's studio apartment in Berlin-Wilmersdorf
" Essentially, it is the classic pictorial genres, namely portrait, still life and landscape, to which Heckel dedicated his entire artistic endeavors throughout his life and from which he meticulously wrested ever new variations of expression," writes art historian and former (until 2017) director of the Brücke-Museum Magdalena M. Moeller (Zu Heckels Werk der 20er Jahre, in: exhib. cat. Erich Heckel. Sein Werk der 20er Jahre, Brücke-Museum, Berlin, Munich 2004, p. 10). With the " Frauenbildnis" (Portrait of a Woman), Heckel created an intimate depiction of his wife Siddi, whose real name was Milda Frieda Georgi (1891-1982). The artist had met the dancer who went by the stage name "Siddi Riha" in Dresden in 1910 and married her during the war. Siddi remained one of his most important models throughout his life. After the end of the war in December 1919, Siddi and Erich Heckel rented a studio apartment on the top floor of a house in Emser Strasse in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, which would become their permanent residence until it was destroyed in 1943. In the same year, the couple purchased a small house in Osterholz on the Flensburg Firth, where the artist set up a second studio.

Heckel painted figurative and ornamental elements on several walls in both the Berlin studio apartment and in Osterholz. The "Frauenbildnis" was created in Berlin, however, no reports from visitors or even photographs of the wall paintings have survived. Only Heckel's original sketches and a few watercolors and paintings document these works of art, which were destroyed in World War II. In the back of this painting, we can see the painted pedestal bordered by a broad red stripe: Heckel sketched several figures and abstract ornamental plants on a light background. While a hugging couple can be identified in our "Frauenbildnis" - possibly a reference to the artist's connection to his wife - "Amaryllis" (1927, part of the Hermann Gerlinger Collection until 2023) and "Schlafende Frau" (1932, Kunsthalle Mannheim) show, among other things, a reclining man with a beard. A watercolor in the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe also shows a standing nude from behind ("Stillleben mit Rosen und schwarzem Krug", 1926).

A new attitude towards reality: New objectivity and a greater closeness to nature
The appalling and deeply painful experiences of the war led to a rejection of the values of the militarist Wilhelmine imperial era and its approach to art. Wild Expressionism was rejected by many artists due to its abstract aesthetics. While politics and business strove for clearly regulated and stable conditions of a society in upheaval, the population longed for a peaceful and calmer life after the war years, expressing a new longing for more reality, which led to a more sober view and a new objectivity in art: a new, more distanced attitude towards reality. Heckel was fully aware of this new zeitgeist, which now gave rise to the art of "New Objectivity", which would also leave traces in his work. "What is characteristic of Heckel's style in the 1920s is [..] the clarity, the organized and precise formality and the calmness of the things implied therein - means of expression he used to approach the stylistic ambitions of the artists of New Objectivity [..]." Sein Werk der 20er Jahre, Munich 2004, p. 11) In his works of the 1920s, we find a greater closeness to nature and an increased objectivity, a new pictorial order with reduced, clearly structured compositions, calmer forms and more delicate colors, while he stuck to his tried and tested motifs and classical pictorial themes. The turn towards a greater closeness to nature is also evident in his portraits from this period, the tendency towards the "classical" they show, certainly stems from his extremely inspiring friendship with the sculptor Ludwig Thormaehlen (1889-1956). At the beginning of the 1920s, he devoted himself to depicting his wife Siddi in all sorts of situations, showing her writing, reading or even sleeping in a series of drawings, watercolors and paintings. The once radical pictorial language with its deformed and exaggerated that Heckel needed to portray a broken, suffering and hopeless type in gloomy surroundings gave way to a calmer, clearer style and figures that, although serious and introverted, appear to have significantly reduced their emotional strain.

"In portrait from the 1920s, Heckel's man appears as a symbol of spiritual asceticism and an existential, but no longer painfully agitated attitude to life. Large figures consistently characterized by classical calm [..] are accompanied by a lyrical tone and radiate subdued lyrical sentiment. Heckel's painting [..] is directed towards measure, perfection and order, but in its confrontation with visible nature it also concedes an important task to the inner imagination." (Christiane Remm, in: ex. cat. Erich Heckel. Sein Werk der 20er Jahre, Brücke-Museum, Berlin, Munich 2004, p. 166)
Emotionality and contemplation
Despite his newfound closeness to nature, Heckel was far from a factual, objective depiction of reality. Instead, he deliberately created compositions in which he changed nature, reduced it and shaped it according to his artistic principles. The "Frauenbildnis" shows a serene and affectionate Siddi in a subdued pictorial language and melancholic mood. Heckel placed Siddi in the foreground of the painting and composed her surroundings from deep spatial zones and color fields. Despite the clearly restrained, clear and orderly pictorial language, the simplified forms and warm, calm colors, Heckel created a powerful and expressive portrait that also describes his entire personal world: his wife, his studio apartment, his art in the background and thus his profession. Heckel contrasts stylistic elements of New Objectivity with a quiet inwardness and emotionality that clearly distinguishes his portraits from the works of "New Objectivity", giving them a very unique, exciting and ambivalent artistic position within the rich artistic landscape of the years between the wars. [CH]