Girls on the Railway Crossover in the Evening, 1913

About the Work

This study is closely related to the painting "Two Girls" (Städel Museum, Inv. Nr. 2011). Both depict an urban setting with two young girls at the centre. In the drawing, Macke virtually locked these surroundings into a web of diagonal zig-zag hatchings, comb-like strokes and intersecting arcs and sweeps. The strongly rhythmized lines translate the impulses of motion, light effects and noises of the big city into an abstract scaffolding and lend the drawing a dynamic effect. In the painting, on the other hand, these lines have evolved into crystalline geometric forms that envelop the two figures. In both mediums, however, Macke combined the representational with the abstract, thus finding his way to his own characteristic brand of “realism”.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.