Four Girls

Four Girls depicts four elegantly dressed young women gathered together against a lush background of trees and foliage. The figures are rendered in simplified forms with rhythmic harmonies of blue, white, and green tones. Macke created the work during his highly productive period in Bonn between 1910 and 1913. The composition conveys a calm, contemplative mood in which the figures and surrounding nature exist in quiet harmony. Influenced by French Orphism and Robert Delaunay's colorism, Macke blends representational subject matter with an increasingly ornamental, two-dimensional treatment of space. The painting was acquired in 1919 by the Museumsverein Düsseldorf at the 'Junges Rheinland' exhibition and has remained in the Kunstpalast collection ever since.