Street in Bonn

The small-format oil painting "Straße in Bonn" (Street in Bonn) by Paul Adolf Seehaus, painted around 1913/14, reveals at first glance the proximity to his teacher August Macke. In contrast, an earlier painting, done in 1911, which shows the same view over Bonn's Blücherstraße to the Venusberg, is more evidence of the study of Fauvist cityscapes. Although the color and surface composition is recognizably also motif-related, the use of colored surfaces is now freer. Similar to August Macke's 1913 shop window painting, this work is not an expression of abstract painting as a pure orchestration of color and light, but it gains its homogeneity essentially through the use of color proportionate to surface and pictorial space. In the sense of Macke, viewing the painting thus enables the perception of a poetically transformed reality, which in its immediacy corresponds to the experience of musical harmonies.