Hermann Max Pechstein was born the son of a factory worker in Zwickau and attended the State School of Arts and Crafts from 1900. From 1902 he was a master student at the Dresden Academy of Art. After making the acquaintance of Erich Heckel, Pechstein joined the artists' group “Die Brücke” in May 1906. During a stay in Paris in 1907, he came into contact with the circle of the ‘Fauves’ (‘The Wild Ones’), who, like the artists of ‘Die Brücke’, wanted to overcome Impressionism. The works of the ‘Brücke’ artists were rejected at the spring exhibition of the ‘Berliner Secession’ in 1910. Pechstein then became a co-founder of the ‘Neue Secession’, from which ‘Die Brücke’ left in 1912 and decided to only take part in exhibitions as a group. Pechstein was expelled from the ‘Brücke’ because of his participation in an exhibition of the ‘Berliner Secession’. In 1915, he volunteered for military service. In 1923, he was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and received a professorship until the National Socialists banned him from teaching and working in 1933. In 1937, many of his works were confiscated as degenerate. He returned to Berlin in 1945 and was appointed as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. In 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit.