The German print portfolio 1890-1930

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.