Studie zum Zoologischen (Garten) I. 1912/13.
Pencil drawing.
Heiderich 1872. With esate stamp on verso (Lugt 1775b) and with inscription "Studie zum Zoologischen" as well as date "1912". On light creme wove paper. 12 x 20 cm (4,7 x 7,8 in).

PROVENANCE: Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Stuttgart 1965, stock catalog 31, no. 914, with illu.
Private collection Rhineland.

Important composition sketch for the painting "Großer Zoologischer Garten (Triptychon)" (Vriesen 363), dated 1913, in the ‘Museum am Ostwall‘, Dortmund. Even if the central female figure in the middle section of the triptych is just hinted at as a head – and this is where Heiderich is wrong, as she speaks about its complete absence - all details of the left part and the middle part are in this sketch. Thus the drawing allows insight into Macke’s operation method, who seemed to have the overall conception before his eyes, just adding and changing details, in favor of an expression focussed on the standing woman on the triptych’s center part. The old form is adhered to. The altar, model for the triptych, also has the core of the expression on the center panel, flanked by the side wings that add narrative illustration. August Macke follows this standard and created a paradigm of a mundane triptych, which did not remain without influence, just thinking about the impressive triptychs by Otto Dix from the twenties. [KD].