The German print portfolio, 1890-1930
Subtitle: serials for a private sphere
By: Robin Reisenfeld ; introduction by Reinhold Heller ; edited by Richard A. Born and Stephanie D'Alessandro.
Contributors: Born, Richard A.; D'Alessandro, Stephanie.; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art.; Detroit Institute of Arts.
Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers, in association with the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago; Distributed in the USA by Rizzoli International Publications
Published: 1992
Place of publication: London; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 159
Subjects: Prints, German -- 19th century -- Exhibitions.; Prints, German -- 20th century -- Exhibitions.; Serial art -- Germany -- Exhibitions.
Genres: Exhibitions.
Description: Despite its importance among Symbolist, Naturalist, Expressionist, and New-Objectivity printmakers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany and Austria, the print portfolio as an art form has never been examined comprehensively in an English-language publication.

Its seminal role in defining a new audience for German and Austrian art beginning in the 1890s; its status as a hedge against the rising economic and political turmoil of the 1920s; its value as a reflection of personal and public, economic, social and political concerns; and even its roots in high and low culture make the investigation of this unique graphic format both necessary and exciting.

The German Print Portfolio 1890-1930: Serials for a Private Sphere examines the central role played by the portfolio in German and Austrian graphics through the rich examples in the collection of the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art and the Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, this volume begins its examination with Max Klinger; the first modern German artist to regard the print portfolio as an integral part of his oeuvre.

Two Naturalist series by Lovis Corinth, Expressionist examples by artists of Brucke as well as by Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, and Oskar Kokoschka, and New-Objectivity and Realist works by Otto Dix, George Grosz, and the Berlin social critic Rafaello Busoni document the diverse stylistic paths this new trend followed. From Klinger's Eine Liebe (A Love) to Barlach's Schiller, An die Freude (Schiller, Ode to Joy) and again to Kokoschka's Der gefesselte Kolumbus (Columbus Chained), the group of portfolios represents a wide range of print techniques.

In addition to a discussion of media and artistic choice, the essays examine the uses and themes of portfolios, from direct political, social, or economic commentary to literary, and even musical allusions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [151]-155) and index.
Catalog of an exhibition held at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Sept. 19-Nov. 8, 1992 and at three other museums including the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art through Dec. 12, 1993.