Drei Künstler ǀ Drei Mappenwerke
Bernhard Kretzschmar - Max Schwimmer - Heinrich Hoerle

ONLINE 12/05/ – 17/07/2021

Prices on request
kontakt@kunsthandel-maass.de

Drei Künstler | Drei Mappenwerke
Bernhard Kretzschmar - Max Schwimmer - Heinrich Hoerle

At the beginning of the 20th century, not only did graphic art experience a new high point, but entire portfolios of original prints enjoyed increasing popularity and demand.

Graphic art as an art form began to shed its stigma of merely being a reproduction, and a new awareness of its originality allowed it to become an independent medium on par with painting. And prints had advantages: they remained affordable for collectors, especially in economically difficult times, and additionally offered aspiring artists the opportunity to quickly achieve a higher degree of recognition through wider distribution of their work. Moreover, production was inexpensive - so it was feasible to try out.

Portfolios also made it possible to publish one's own thoughts and experiences in both text and image, or even to bring avant-garde approaches and entire manifestos to the public in collaborative graphic projects with colleagues. From the 1920s onwards, there was literally a flood of the most diverse graphic projects in Germany.

The present online exhibition by Kunsthandel Jörg Maaß comprises three selected, monographic portfolios from this period, which are rarely found today as complete series.

All three graphic sequences convey the feeling and prevailing mood after the First World War. All three reflect the confrontation of young artists with the turmoil of their time and provide insights into an entire war generation’s attempt to find its persona. And yet all three are quite different.

Bernhard Kretzschmar - ERLEBNISSE (1921)

Bernhard Kretzschmar's powerful narrative images testify to his tireless observation from which he depicts the petty-bourgeois-proletarian milieu. Without the cynicism of many of his New-Objectivity colleagues, Kretzschmar approaches people with a great deal of understanding and sympathy for their situation.
"In his 15-sheet portfolio Erlebnisse, Kretzschmar brings together etchings of varying format and content to create a metropolitan prose that oscillates between street, interior, and fairground." (quoted in Benjamin Rux, Kleinbürgertum und Großstadtprosa, in: Deutung des Daseins. Bernhard Kretzschmar. Malerei. Graphik. Ed. by Sigrid Walther and Gisbert Porstmann, Städtische Galerie Dresden 2017, p. 36.)

The complete portfolio Erlebnisse with title lithograph (Schmidt L 20) and 15 etchings (drypoint with tonal wiping, Schmidt R 83, 87 - 100), in original half-linen portfolio folder with red paste paper cover. Our set includes Der Schützenkönig (Schmidt R 83) instead of Wettinstraße (Schmidt R 101) which is listed by Schmidt as part of the portfolio.
The loose sheets each signed, dated and titled in pencil and most of them numbered 1/10. Brilliant impressions with burr and subtle platetone, on firm wove paper. The lithograph of the title page on thin wove paper. Probably published 1921 by Galerie Arnold, Dresden, in a total edition of 30 copies.

Portfolio  510 x 450 mm

Max Schwimmer - ABENTEURER (1921)

Max Schwimmer's formal language still remains entirely rooted in Expressionism. His early drypoint works in the portfolio Abenteurer cannot conceal the strong influence of Oskar Kokoschka's previous portfolio "Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen". The quickly scattered short bundles of lines correspond to the nervousness of the time and help project the chaos and tragedy of the early 1920s.
In the introductory text to the etchings, which is missing from our copy, Johannes R. Becher attempted to interpret Schwimmer's works in this way: "...I chisel away at my work ... cut open, add and cut apart ... Ulcer to ulcer. And unfading: a purple flower in my crown! O: how I yearn! Then: I stand up. Then: I push myself off the earth ... Then: I also break out the bars of the cages..." (quoted from Magdalena George: Das graphische Werk, in: Max Schwimmer. Das graphische Werk, ed. by Museum der bildenden Künste et al., Leipzig 1975).

The original half-linen portfolio folder, the cover in cardboard with title illustration, thereon inscribed Abenteurer fünf Kaltnadelradierungen von Max Schwimmer and with the colophon, numbered 30, inside.
The complete set of five loose drypoints (George 3 – 7), without the introduction of Johannes R. Becher. All prints signed in pencil and numbered 30/30. Brilliant impressions with delicate platetone on chamois sturdy paper. The only edition of 30 numbered copies, published by Verlag Friedrich Dehne Leipzig in 1921.

Portfolio 350 x 270 mm

Heinrich Hoerle - KRÜPPEL (1920)

Heinrich Hoerle strikes more drastic tones in his Krüppelmappe. Relentlessly direct, placed in surreal settings between reality, dream, and hallucination, the prints take a critical approach towards the social misery of the war-disabled and present profoundly human and psychological aspects of physical mutilation. Together with the painter Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and the photographer August Sander, Hoerle founded the group of progressive artists in Cologne in the early 1920s who wanted to document the people and social structures of their time in images.

The complete portfolio Krüppelmappe (Backes 17) in original half-linen portfolio folder, the cover in dark brown paper, with mounted title card as a linocut on thin Japan paper (237 x 180 mm, Backes 16). With loose title page including imprint and table of contents, numbered in pencil 8.
All 12 lithographs signed in pencil Hoerle. Self-published in 1920, H H, Köln-Lindenthal, Bachemer Str. 243. On yellowish paper. Rare.

Portfolio 645 x 493 mm

Sheet  size each 592 x 460 mm