Sand Diggers on the Tiber was included in a 1910 exhibition at the Galerie Arnold in Dresden, which featured work by the four primary members of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge): Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Founded in Dresden in 1905 by Heckel, Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl, the name of the group signaled the artists’ intent to pass over the artistic conventions of the present to create an art of the future. Sand Diggers on the Tiber, depicting workers harvesting sand from the Tiber riverbed to be used in building construction, is one of the vibrant landscapes painted during Heckel’s influential 1909 trip to Italy, where he studied Etruscan art. This painting shows the artist’s transition from his earlier, heavily layered impasto technique toward rapid, decisive gestures and a lighter palette, which he achieved through the use of paint diluted with varnish.

Wall label, 2021. .