A Jugendstil Masterpiece: Sehnsucht by Gotz Dohler

In the early years of the twentieth century, many German artists were busy constructing the vocabulary of Expressionism. But some remained faithful to the Symbolist/Art Nouveau aesthetic of the end of the previous century, known as Jugendstil. I think the etching in this post, published in 1906 by the Leipzig art revue Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, is one of the masterpieces of late Jugendstil. It's one of the most perfect summations of Jugendstil I have seen - intricate, brooding, romantic, with a magical transformation between human and natural forms. Please click on the image to get a larger version with more detail.

C. Götz Döhler, Sehnsucht (Longing)

Etching with aquatint, 1906

What is perhaps most surprising about this work is that the artist who created it, Götz Dohler, remains almost completely unknown. I have managed to discover a first initial, C., and a year of birth, 1867, and that's it. He's not listed in Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. Google comes up with almost nothing. I can't find any record of work by Döhler being sold or offered for sale. Via Libri doesn't come up with any books or journals illustrated by him. It's as if he just created this one perfect work and then vanished into thin air. And yet no one acquires the technical skill shown in Sehnsucht without a lot of practice. I can imagine that if Götz Döhler remained doggedly faithful to Judgendstil he would have faded from view as that style became outmoded, and equally that his lush romantic sensibility would have been out-of-tune with the times once the catastrophe of the First World War go under way. But it still seems mysterious that so little can be ascertained about an artist of such stature. Do any of my readers know anything more about him?

Update 15 September 2013:
I correct myself: C. Götz Döhler is listed in Bénézit, with the variant spelling Doehler. He was born in Glachau on the 31st of March 1867. He studied in Leipzig, and seems to have lived and worked there. Although he is described as a painter and printmaker, his main work seems to have been designing and executing large decorative paintings.

Process, materials, and aesthetics: woodblocks by Otto Eckmann

Otto Eckmann was one of the most important figures in the Judgendstil (German Art Nouveau) art movement. Born in Hamburg in 1865, Otto Eckmann studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg, and then in Nuremberg, before entering the Munich Academy of Fine Art in 1885. In the end it was to be the arts and crafts element of his training that predominated. After initial success as a painter in the Symbolist style, in 1894 Otto Eckmann renounced oil painting and auctioned off his canvases. From this point he concentrated on graphics (particularly woodcuts) and on the design of tapestries, stained glass, furniture, fabrics, and ceramics. Otto Eckmann was also a pioneering typographer and type designer, and his Jugendstil typefaces Eckmann and Fette Eckmann are still in use today. Eckmann's type design was influenced by Japanese script, just as his woodcuts show the strong influence of Japanese art. Otto Eckmann was a major contributor to the two most important Art Nouveau revues published in Germany, Pan and Jugend. He died in 1902.

Otto Eckmann, Schwertlilien

Colour woodcut, 1895

In many ways, the career of Otto Eckmann can be seen as pivotal in the democratization of art. This is true both in the way he blurred the distinction between fine and decorative arts, and in the way he renounced oil painting, which was geared to an art market of the rich and powerful, for popular and commercial art forms that reached as wide an audience as possible.

Otto Eckmann, Nachtreiher

Colour woodcut, 1896

The extent to which craft decisions influenced artistic outcomes in his work can be seen in my two colour woodblock prints. Both were published by Pan, and both were printed by Gieseke und Devrient in Leipzig. Although both are intended to be independent graphic images, I could easily imagine either of them being put to commercial use: Schwertlilien as a repeat image on a textile, for instance, or Nachtreiher as a motif on ceramics. And in each case decisions about processes and materials have decisively influenced the aesthetics of the final print. Schwertlilien (Irises), with its sharp outlines and bold contrasts between the black and yellow of the flowers, the grey of their leaves, and the uninked background, has been printed on cream wove paper. The creaminess softens the image and prevents it from being stark and challenging, while the robust thickness and open texture of the paper give an organic solidity to the print. By contrast, the ethereal Nachtreiher (Night herons), is printed on delicate, wafer-thin china paper, which is then floated onto a wove backing sheet. The resulting print has a dreamlike quality, as if the herons are conferring on some matter of mystical importance. This is quite at odds with the immediate physicality of the irises, which feel as if you could reach out and pluck them from the page.

Anyone for tennis?

This wonderful scene of a self-absorbed tennis player trailed by three adoring acolytes is one of 19 etchings made between 1894 and 1896 by Eugen Kirchner,  a remarkable artist who has had the misfortune of being overshadowed by a younger man with a similar name, the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Die Tennisspieler is usually dated to 1896, but it was probably made the previous year, as the 1895 etching Dame mit Spazierstock (also known as Dame im Zimmer), incorporates the tennis player composition, showing it as a painted panel above a door.

Eugen Kirchner, Die Tennisspieler (The Tennis Player)

Etching with aquatint, 1894-1896

Eugen Kirchner was born in Halle in 1865. A founder member of the Vienna Secession, Eugen Kirchner also exhibited with the Berlin Secession, and contributed to both Pan and Die Graphischen Kunste. He had a major exhibition of drawings, watercolours and etchings in Dresden in 1904. As an etcher, he is particularly noted for his mastery of aquatint, as in Die Tennisspieler. Eugen Kirchner died in 1938.

Jugendstil bookplates

The bookplate or ex libris has put bread and butter on many an artist’s table, and over the course of time has developed into a flourishing art form all of its own. I don’t pretend to know very much about the history and development of ex libris, but seem to have acquired some anyway. I think this little group of Austrian, Czech and German bookplates of the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) period are particularly charming. They come from the Vienna art revue Die Graphischen Künste, from the years 1911, 1912, and 1914.

Maximilian Liebenwein (Austrian, 1869-1926)

Ex libris Josef Kundrat

Lithograph, 1910

Maximilian Liebenwein

Ex libris Karl Stark

Lithograph, 1910

Maximilian Liebenwein

Ex libris der Verbindung von Wiener Kunstakademikern “Athenaia”

Lithograph, 1910

Alfred Cossmann (Austrian, 1870-1951)

Ex libris Arthur Graf

Etching, c.1912

Alfred Cossman

Ex libris Franz J. Kaiser

Etching. c.1912

Alois Kolb (Austrian, 1875-1942)

Ex libris Gertrud Kolb

Etching, c.1914

Rudolf Junk (Austrian, 1880-1943)

Ex libris Rudolf Junk

Lithograph, c.1914

Arnošt Hofbauer (Czech, 1869-1944)

Ex libris Leopold Heyrovsky

Lithograph, c.1914

Emil Orlik (Czech, 1870-1932)

Ex libris Martha Poensgen

Lithograph, c.1914

Martha Hofrichter (Czech, 1872-1960)

Ex libris Anna Boeck

Lithograph, c.1914

Otokar Štáfl (Czech, 1884-1947)

Ex libris Otokar Štáfl

Lithograph, c.1914

Felix Hollenberg (German, 1868-1945)

Ex libris Albert Gussmann

Etching, c.1914

Julius Diez (German, 1870-1957)

Ex libris Toni Stadler

Lithograph, c.1914