Landscape

During winter sightseeing trips in 1926, Max Kühn wandered through the Wkrzańska Forest (Ueckermünder Heide). There, in January and February, he visited the hills of the Osowski Forest (Wussower Wald), since the beginning of the modern era one of the favourite excursions of the townsfolk, organised just beyond the north-western outskirts of Szczecin. From the beginning of the 20th century, the route led through the villa districts of Łękno (Westend) and Pogodno (Neu-Westend), Kasprowicz Park (then Quistorpa) with its fruit trees and picturesque miniature rock-water gardens. On the territory of the Eckerberg estate (today: the Arkona estate) the artificial landscape gently transformed into an area of natural forest, in which there were curative houses and a popular inn with a café, wine bar and beer hall. There were also sanatoriums and restaurants at Glambecksee and Siebenbachmühlen, surrounded by tall pine trees, and at today's Sandsee the Osowa forester's lodge (Forsthaus Wussow) offered catering services. The hills, 137 metres above sea level, gave a glimpse of the Leśno Górne (Hohenleese) on the Szczecin Lagoon. The vantage points were linked by footpaths and cycle paths, allowing visitors to walk or cycle as far as Messenthin, from where they could return to the city by steamboat or railway. Kühn made use of the long perspective in painting undulating post-glacial formations interspersed with tree ranges. Constructing the picture from clearly separated planes, from warm colours in the lower part to more and more bluish ones near the horizon, he referred to the beginnings of the national school of landscape painting. Flat, sparingly applied paint and characteristic colours gave the effect similar to the first mountain watercolours created by Albrecht Dürer - a patron of many artists of the New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit).

Szymon Piotr Kubiak