In January 1944, Erich Heckel's studio was bombed in an air raid. In addition to 17 paintings and 8 wooden sculptures, hundreds of watercolors, drawings and prints perished in the flames. Only very few of Erich Heckel's colored chalk drawings made during the years of the ‘Brücke‘, those famous quarter-hour nudes and spontaneous accounts of the common studio events, have survived. "Unterhaltung" is such a sheet: two female models, one reclined with her back to the viewer, the other sitting next to her. Both women are naked, the situation is indicated with a few bright colors. We see only the most important outlines of the body. Many of the few drawings by Erich Heckel from this period that have survived were executed in charcoal or pen, only very few shine in bright colors like our beautiful sheet from the Gerlinger Collection. Bright colors define the body contours here. Purple and blue are superimposed together with yellow and brown as spontaneous lines. A structuring basic drawing can only be recognized as a fine line, for example in the bent legs of the reclining figure.

Drawings like this were created in hours of joint studio work by the Brücke artists. They are free and informal with their girlfriends and models; this creates the style-defining perception of the current situation. As a parallel, Kirchner's pastels made around the same time as this sheet should be pointed out. A colored chalk drawing by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from the same year may correspond to the same studio situation. (Fs Dre/BG 42 see Ketterer Kunst A 400 lot 20). Heckel's "Unterhaltung" is characterized by a pronounced lightness. Despite all security in the tectonic, it retains a mobility, self-evidence and openness that comes across suggestively as a life reflex. [EH]