This week German ebay provides you with an opportunity to see one or two colour woodcuts you will not see very often as well as one or two nice-looking prints by more well-known artists. Above all, there is Helene Mass' rich and subtle Gehoeft im Schnee, with remarkably bright fresh colours. It just shows what a difference a good photograph also makes. This print re-affirms my faith in Mass, which I confess sometimes wavers. This is Mass at her most thrilling, convincing and successful
Not as good perhaps but even more expensive is another rarity by Helen Tupke Grande. No matter. You won't even pick much up on a Google search except her wonderful print of Venetian boats.
Speaking of which there is an unusually bright image of Carl Thiemann's Venezianischen Fischerbooten. I know it's fairly standard stuff fro him, but it does come with copious notes by the master himself. With all the glassy reflections, this reminds me of the famous Abend and I think when you see this close-up and personal, those daubed reflections will look impressive.
More low-key, but no less interesting for all that, is a muted colour woodcut by the Polish artist, Stefan Flipkiewicz, who is new to me. It's unusually early, dating from 1908, a time when artists were still often working with few colours. You can see where Mass had her roots and what she would have done with an image like this.
Finally, this intense and lyrical image by Zdrasila Adolf, yet another name that is new to me, and an unusual woodcut whose bright colours look almost contemporary. I would like to see a larger, better photograph of this - or better still, the print itself. This is hard to judge by what we can see here. It has a fairy-tale delicacy that reminds me of French prints and I especially like the play-off of sunlight and shadow. More complex that it might look at first sight.
Charles,
ReplyDeletethe last two prints were published in "Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst" as far as I know - like some of Thiemann's works.
Klaus
That's interesting. I wondered if the Filipkiewicz was along those lines. A lot of them were not exactly what we would call original prints in Britain.
ReplyDeleteI own a Thiemann that was published that way. The quality is very good, and it's a genuine woodcut, of course, and not a reproduction like those published in the "Studio". However, it is not a "Handdruck" (=printed by hand) and therefore considered less valuable. Having said that, there are prints that were exclusively published in art magazines, as you know. Eckmann's "Nachtreiher" (in PAN) would be an example.
ReplyDeleteKlaus
I planned to do a post about this subject at one time, but I don't know enough about German and Austrian art publishing. Carl Moll, Thiemann and Walther Klemm all used Viennese commercial publishers who used machine printing to high standards. But you probably remember a discussion about the differences between a Klemm print using both methods.
ReplyDeleteThe tone in Britain was set to some extent by the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour who insisted on self-printing for all work exhibited. It wasn't until 1912 that a gallery agreed to publish everything by a colour woodcutter (Verpilleux). Machine printing was associated with either reproductive wood engraving or Baxter Prints, both of which were anathema to the arts and crafts movement of which colour woodcut in Britain was a part. The only really successful colour printmaker to use mass production was John Hall Thorpe, but there were some surprising anomalies.
I was also surprised to come across the other day a writer in the 1920s doubting that an artist had cut his own blocks. This was Hesketh Hubbard (and Frank Whittington eventually signed Hubbard's prints as well). So, there were all kinds of variations here, too.
PS. I once bought one of those small Thiemann prints very cheaply - the one of the tree in snowfall - then the dealer told me had lost it.
ReplyDeleteThat must be annoying. The one with the tree in snowfall is quite charming. The smaller prints by Thiemann that you mention are nearly always posthumous, often with a printed signature.
ReplyDelete