Walk on the Bridge

From May to September of 1912 Cologne held the Sonderbund exhibition, the largest gathering of new European painting Germany had yet seen, with Van Gogh by the roomful alongside Cézanne, Gauguin, Munch and Picasso. August Macke sat on the committee that put it together. So in the year he spent showing the Rhineland the most argued-over pictures in Europe, what he painted himself was people out for a walk. Nothing in this one is happening. A few figures stroll under trees, and the colour is laid down in flat, simplified patches that barely bother with depth. That August he was called away for a few weeks of reserve training at the Elsenborn army ground, and then went back to the parks and the promenades.