Expressionism: A new reality
For Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the first years after the First World War were characterized by a gradual recovery of his artistic productivity and the reestablishment of his position as an artist. His first major exhibition took place at Ferdinand Möller in Berlin in 1919, and the art magazine "Genius" published an enthusiastic essay by Ernst Gosebruch, then director of the Kunstmuseum Essen. Wilhelm R. Valentiner wrote the first monograph about him in 1920. Expressionism had now been established as a style that found expression not only in visual arts, but also in literature and film. The characteristic feature of this art, as defined by Paul Fechter in his first essay on Expressionism in 1914, is "that it is based on a certain emotional disposition, a will or rather an urge and a necessity, that its essential purpose is to give concentrated, non-conceptually direct expression to the feeling that is triggered by the vivid existence of the world" (Paul Fechter, Der Expressionismus, Munich 1914, p. 21). The most expressive equivalent is sought for this emotional dimension of feelings and experiences, which, however, no longer seeks to find its foundations in the reproduction of external reality. Men's encounters with the world are often reflected in social motifs and are characterized by inner tension, intensity and vigor.
A new order for the private and artistic world
Schmidt-Rottluff's deployment in the World War I also had a decisive impact on him. On May 12, 1915, he was drafted into military service as a soldier; two days later he found himself "already armed and ready for the battlefield, under oath and presumably on the way to vast Russia tomorrow", as he wrote to Wilhelm Niemeyer (Bremen/Munich 1989, p. 85). He was sent to Vilnius, followed by a winter at Lake Naroch, where he was assigned the task of building posts and trenches and setting up barbed wire fortifications. Thanks to the efforts of the poet and friend Richard Dehmel, he was seconded to the accounting office in Kowno in 1916. However, artistic work, especially painting, was largely impossible, and he only produced woodcuts and a few wooden sculptures.

In the first year after his return, he married the photographer Emy Frisch, his childhood friend. The artist struggled hard to overcome his experiences, as he wrote: "I am very little satisfied with this summer, which offered so much fertile soil for melancholy. All the torment of the years of war had such a strong and lasting effect that I am still unable to rid myself of it, and I feel too weak to face my work. I have regained some confidence in color - that may be all", Schmidt-Rottluff wrote to his friend and collector, the art historian Wilhelm Niemeyer, in 1919. (Quoted from: Gerhard Wietek, Schmidt-Rottluff in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein, Neumünster 1984, p. 62). Slowly, however, the bottled-up creative energy broke new ground and found expression in the pursuit of new motifs and means of expression. The landscape became such a new means of expression. For the first time, moon and sun became motifs of interest as anchor points that provided order, stability and reassurance in a world that had fallen apart at the seams.
The post-apocalyptic landscape vision
A dark sun in front of a black backdrop rises above a vast landscape with young trees flickering like small flames on the ground. Barren trunks rise into a sky glowing in a sulphurous yellow-greenish light. The sun does not appear to be the source of the light,; instead, the glow is reminiscent of electric lights found in big cities. The moving and swaying, dynamic forms create an image of a natural order that has been shaken and no longer offers room for a pictorially exploration of a paradisiacal refuge. According to Grohmann, many paintings from this period were "born out of a spirit shaped by both 'near death experience' and a feeling of rebirth" (Grohmann 1956, p. 92). This finds expression in its purest form in the powerful, highly colorful paintings that assert Expressionism as a style. In art as well as in literature and film, this movement is perceived as a beacon of progress that releases new energies in its dynamic forms: the artist is "[..] a demonically driven person who blasts rigid forms with dynamite, shakes up the sedated life, sacrifices securities to restless skepticism" (Rudolf Kurtz, Expressionismus und Film, Berlin 1926, p. 83).

Sun over a pine forest - 1913 and 1920
It was the genre of landscape painting in particular that reflected the post-apocalyptic feeling of the nervous 1920s. Previously valid orders, including those between man and nature that had long defined landscape painting, were subjected to a complete revision. In contrast to the inner emotional landscapes of Romanticism, characterized by a spirit of an all-encompassing harmony, the experiences and adventures of modern man now break through in colors and forms and create their own reality. More inaccessible than the painting "Sonne im Kiefernwald" from 1913 (formerly Wilhelm Niemyer Collection, today at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), painted shortly before the war, it shows a similar motif in a more harmonious and warm colors, the present painting impressively visualizes the beginning of a new era and the artist's return to his earlier creative power. Schmidt-Rottluff succeeds here in creating an extraordinary painting in which the spirit of the times is concentrated in a fascinating way and which may be regarded as an expressionist landscape par excellence.

From Germany to Japan and back
The provenance history of the painting is not an ordinary one. The work probably came to Japan directly through the Berlin art salon of Alfred Heller in the early 1920s. It may have previously been in the Berlin collection of Dr. Matheus for a short time. However, apart from a handwritten note by Rosa Schapire, there is no further evidence suggesting this. The work is certainly documented in the exhibition "Oshu hyogenha bijutsuten" (Exhibition of European Expressionism) in the Maruzen Gallery in the heart of Tokyo, where it was exhibited in June 1924. A newspaper clipping depicts the painting, alongside another one by Marthe (Tour) Donas, as part of an exhibition review. A second presentation followed at the Garo Kudan Gallery, also in Tokyo, in December the same year. Here, in addition to another oil painting by Schmidt-Rottluff ("Two Women"), two watercolors by the artist ("Scene" and "New Building") were also shown.
Unfortunately, the exhibition brochures only provide information on the exhibited works, but not on their owners. However, it is highly likely that the collector of " Junger Wald und Sonne" was the banker Hisataka Munakata (1889-1970), who was demonstrably associated with the Alfred Heller art salon and also had works by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in his remarkable collection. It was not until the 1980s that the work returned to its country of origin where it has been part of the Hermann Gerlinger Collection for many years. [KT/SD]