Max Pechsteins painting called "Zwiesprache" (Two Voices) painted in 1920 is of two nude females conversing in a landscape. Its condition is unusually fine, with strong boldly printed colors. The sheet has only some soft creasing in the margins. The subject matter is most probably sexuality and it incorporates the angular forms of Oceanic and African art. The two nudes have a brownish-yellow color with white and black outlines. The background of the two nudes are diagonal and symmetrical lines enhanced with luminous blue color. The figures are very abstract with a simple humanistic form and they aren't looking at the observer but at each other.
             It seems like Max Pechstein has painted the two nude females from models. "Zwiesprache" indicates an adept cutting technique where strokes are deeply cut into the woodblock. His woodcut resembles Picasso's "les demoiselles d'avigon". The nudes look like wooden figures but Pechsteins does not have fragments in his figures compared to Picasso's overlapping flat planes and angular lines. And Pechstein was not a cubist; he was influenced by African art, which one can see in the faces and lines of the figure. The visage mirror African masks and the bodies can be associated with woodcarvings. Even Picasso was influenced by woodcarvings, which were significant in the figures and faces of his nude's painting ("les demoiselles d'avigon"). In general, Pechstein was definitely inspired by his journeys to the South Seas and the figures are the carvings of its citizens. His style can be characterized as linear, rhythmical expression, brilliant/vibrant color, and simplification of form and harsher outlines. These features aim at making a psychological rather than a descriptive statement. The technique is exaggerated and distorted than the objective features of the outside world. They embody violent extremes of mood and feeling. The function was that the artist sought to portray subjective emotions and re...