Herman Hesse's Watercolors as Therapy Against Depression

Herman Hesse created approximately 3,000 watercolors over his lifetime, many depicting the landscapes of Montagnola, Switzerland, where he moved after World War I. There he wrote Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund. His turn to painting was prompted by a deep creative and personal crisis that led to depression. In 1916, Dr. J.B. Lang, a Jungian psychoanalyst, advised him to paint his dreams as therapy. Hesse began painting in Bern and Lucerne, later focusing on landscapes, self-portraits, and illustrations for his stories. Stylistically, his work shows affinities with Macke, Matisse, Kandinsky, and Expressionism, using primary colors and a simple, joyful, almost childlike representation. His paintings were exhibited worldwide in cities including Paris, New York, Madrid, San Francisco, and Hamburg. Hesse considered his visual art equally important as his writing, stating: 'Between my painting and my poetry there is no discrepancy; I always seek poetic truth, not naturalistic truth.' He died in Montagnola in 1962.