DOI issue:
Nr. 193 (März 1913)
DOI article:B. Nelson, W. H. de: German art: Berlin photographic company
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43452#0372
German Art
GERMAN ART: BERLIN PHOTO-
GRAPHIC COMPANY
BY W. H. de B. NELSON
30KING back to the times of
Diirer and Holbein, we see the
great lead that Germany took
in drawing, etching and lithog-
raphy. An exhibition was
held here during December in
order to demonstrate how far
German art has sustained that
position to-day, and out of many thousands of
etchings, drawings, woodcuts and lithographs sent
from Berlin, Mr. Birnbaum selected between
three and four hundred, as illustrative of the work
accomplished by upwards of eighty artists, who,
in his opinion, constitute the backbone of German
graphic art at this moment. The exhibition has
proved itself a colossal surprise; it was a hurly-
burly, a pandemonium, a clash of cymbals re-
sounding amid the sensitive petals of roses; epics
and lyrics, side by side. Mr. Birnbaum provided
his catalogue with a prefatory essay, a perusal of
which should put any one aufait with the trend and
bend of modern art in illustration across the Rhine.
Though it is difficult to summarize by division
into schools, it is impossible to judge progress
without regarding all craftsmen more or less from
their artistic relationship with Klinger, Thoma or
Liebermann. Some fall naturally into classes by
themselves, however, as for instance, Kathe Roll-
witz, Willi Geiger, Barlach and Heinrich Vogeler.
Klinger’s true expression appears to best advan-
tage in his etchings, which, rejected at the Berlin
Academy in 1878, are to-day revered for their dra-
matic power and romanticism. Hans Thoma de-
picted the German peasantry of the Black Forest
and, incidentally, while in Paris, discovered
Manet. His influence to a large extent caused the
migration of so many artists to the German
Barbizon, Worpswede, a moor-girt village near
Bremen. Here were to be found Modersohn,
Hans am Ende, Overbeck and Heinrich Vogeler.
Liebermann, so strongly influenced by Degas,
delights us with his Jews, horse-racing, boys
bathing and such like subjects; his draughtsman-
ship is exquisite and audacious.
Willi Geiger—not to be confused with Ernst
Geyger—is shown in four capital drawings of
tauromachy, full of action. In one a picador is
unhorsed; in another we see a banderillero plant-
ing his darts. Kathe Kollwitz grips the imagina-
tion with the poignancy of her art. We see Mother
and Death embrac-
ing a dying child; it
is brutal, but it is
art. Les miseres de
la vie humaine are
her special prov-
ince. Let us leave
her there and pass
toHeinrich Vogeler;
here we meet the
true German spirit,
with its fairy tales,
allegories and sym-
bolism. What sim-
plicity and at the
same time what
kinship with Jap-
anese art we dis-
cover in that much-
admired garden of
Olbricht’s, in the
delicate drawing of
the fence in snow
and the line of hem-
locks. Here is lib-
eration from all
conventions of art.
Rich feeling and ac-
complished crafts-
manship underlie
the work of Lehm-
bruch, Walter
Klemm and Ger-
hard Graf. Litho-
graphs and wood-
cuts were not so
long since despised
as being merely
commercial meth-
ods of reproduc-
tion, but one has
only to glance at
the beautiful litho-
graphs of von Hoff-
mann, Berthold
Clauss and the re-
markable colored
woodcuts of
Klemm, Rath, Graf
and Orlik, to see
what results can be
obtained. What
can be said of the
Futurists? One is
Courtesy of the Berlin Photographic
Company
GANYMEDE ETCHING BY
OTTO GREINER
XIX
GERMAN ART: BERLIN PHOTO-
GRAPHIC COMPANY
BY W. H. de B. NELSON
30KING back to the times of
Diirer and Holbein, we see the
great lead that Germany took
in drawing, etching and lithog-
raphy. An exhibition was
held here during December in
order to demonstrate how far
German art has sustained that
position to-day, and out of many thousands of
etchings, drawings, woodcuts and lithographs sent
from Berlin, Mr. Birnbaum selected between
three and four hundred, as illustrative of the work
accomplished by upwards of eighty artists, who,
in his opinion, constitute the backbone of German
graphic art at this moment. The exhibition has
proved itself a colossal surprise; it was a hurly-
burly, a pandemonium, a clash of cymbals re-
sounding amid the sensitive petals of roses; epics
and lyrics, side by side. Mr. Birnbaum provided
his catalogue with a prefatory essay, a perusal of
which should put any one aufait with the trend and
bend of modern art in illustration across the Rhine.
Though it is difficult to summarize by division
into schools, it is impossible to judge progress
without regarding all craftsmen more or less from
their artistic relationship with Klinger, Thoma or
Liebermann. Some fall naturally into classes by
themselves, however, as for instance, Kathe Roll-
witz, Willi Geiger, Barlach and Heinrich Vogeler.
Klinger’s true expression appears to best advan-
tage in his etchings, which, rejected at the Berlin
Academy in 1878, are to-day revered for their dra-
matic power and romanticism. Hans Thoma de-
picted the German peasantry of the Black Forest
and, incidentally, while in Paris, discovered
Manet. His influence to a large extent caused the
migration of so many artists to the German
Barbizon, Worpswede, a moor-girt village near
Bremen. Here were to be found Modersohn,
Hans am Ende, Overbeck and Heinrich Vogeler.
Liebermann, so strongly influenced by Degas,
delights us with his Jews, horse-racing, boys
bathing and such like subjects; his draughtsman-
ship is exquisite and audacious.
Willi Geiger—not to be confused with Ernst
Geyger—is shown in four capital drawings of
tauromachy, full of action. In one a picador is
unhorsed; in another we see a banderillero plant-
ing his darts. Kathe Kollwitz grips the imagina-
tion with the poignancy of her art. We see Mother
and Death embrac-
ing a dying child; it
is brutal, but it is
art. Les miseres de
la vie humaine are
her special prov-
ince. Let us leave
her there and pass
toHeinrich Vogeler;
here we meet the
true German spirit,
with its fairy tales,
allegories and sym-
bolism. What sim-
plicity and at the
same time what
kinship with Jap-
anese art we dis-
cover in that much-
admired garden of
Olbricht’s, in the
delicate drawing of
the fence in snow
and the line of hem-
locks. Here is lib-
eration from all
conventions of art.
Rich feeling and ac-
complished crafts-
manship underlie
the work of Lehm-
bruch, Walter
Klemm and Ger-
hard Graf. Litho-
graphs and wood-
cuts were not so
long since despised
as being merely
commercial meth-
ods of reproduc-
tion, but one has
only to glance at
the beautiful litho-
graphs of von Hoff-
mann, Berthold
Clauss and the re-
markable colored
woodcuts of
Klemm, Rath, Graf
and Orlik, to see
what results can be
obtained. What
can be said of the
Futurists? One is
Courtesy of the Berlin Photographic
Company
GANYMEDE ETCHING BY
OTTO GREINER
XIX