Straight Canal, 1915

About the Work

In 1915, Heckel was stationed in Ostende as a medical orderly. The perspective of the first woodcut he made there, “Straight Canal”, is so bold as to exert a strong pull on the viewer. The sky over the landscape fairly explodes with glaring light. This depiction presumably reflects the artist’s war experiences. At the same time, it manifests his concern with light and atmosphere, and with translating a perception of landscape into the woodcut medium.

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.