Rediscovering Albert Varadi

I first came across the Hungarian artist Albert Váradi in the Parisian art revue Byblis. In 1924 he contributed a wonderfully raffish and dandified etched portrait of the editor of Byblis, Pierre Gusman (himself a distinguished printmaker). There was an accompanying essay on Váradi by Loÿs Delteil, and a catalogue raisonné of his etchings to date. Starting in 1920, Váradi had produced 64 etchings and drypoints by summer 1924, plus a further 15 etchings that appeared in two books, Boccaccio's Das Liebeslabyrinth and Heine's Die Harzreise. As both of these books were published in Germany, it would appear that Váradi was one of many displaced artists from Eastern and Central Europe who settled in the West after WWI, usually gravitating to Paris, but often via some other country first. I was intrigued, and decided to find out what I could about this talented artist. As it turns out, the Byblis article by Delteil and the accompanying catalogue seem to be the best information available, though there is also a substantial entry on Váradi in Marcus Osterwalder, Dictionnaire des Illustrateurs 1905-1965.

Albert Váradi, Portrait de Pierre Gusman

Etching, 1924

Albert Váradi was born in Nagyvárad in Transylvania on 16 October 1896; his birthplace, then in Hungary, is today known as Oradea and is now in Romania, so both Hungary and Romania may lay claim to him. Váradi started his studies at the Budapest Academy and then continued at the Budapest School of Decorative Art. Drawn to printmaking after five years concentrating on sculpture, Váradi went to Munich in 1920 (or late 1919) to learn the art of etching under Peter Halm. That he showed immediate promise in this new field is evidenced by the fact that his etchings for Boccaccio were published in an edition of 250 copies by Hesperos Verlag in 1921, and those for Heine in an edition of 350 copies by Paul Stangl Verlag the following year. My copies of the Heine etchings are, rather surprisingly, each individually hand-signed by Váradi, presumably for a friend.

Albert Váradi, Title page for Das Liebeslabyrinth

Etching, 1921

Albert Váradi, Etching for Das Liebeslabyrinth

Etching, 1921

Albert Váradi, Etching for Das Liebeslabyrinth

Etching, 1921

Albert Váradi, Etching for Das Liebeslabyrinth

Etching, 1921

In April 1923 Váradi moved to Paris, where he first exhibited in that year's Salon d'Automne. He produced etchings of Paris street scenes, beaches in Normandy, and portraits, which Loÿs Delteil thought his strongest work. Váradi did not make preparatory drawings, but drew directly onto the copperplate, like Paul Helleu and Marcellin Desboutin. Most of Albert Váradi's etchings were issued in tiny editions 10 or 30 copies, though two were more widely distributed: his portrait of Eugène Delâtre appeared in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (c.1500 copies), and his portrait of Pierre Gusman was published in Byblis, Miroir des Arts du Livre et de l'Estampe (700 copies).

Albert Váradi, Title page for Die Harzreise

Etching, 1922

Albert Váradi, Etching for Die Harzreise

Etching, 1922

Albert Váradi, Etching for Die Harzreise

Etching, 1922

Albert Váradi, Etching for Die Harzreise

Etching, 1922

Sadly, Albert Váradi died in Paris in 1925, his promising career cut short at the age of just 28, having only been etching for five years. What the final total of his etchings was, I do not know, but the total of individual works, even counting the etchings for Boccaccio and Heine, is almost certainly less than 100.

Tender agony: the tragic fate of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and Constance Mayer

In his day, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823) was one of the most famous and successful artists in France. His art is poised between the strict neo-classicism of David and Ingres and the lush romanticism of Delacroix and Géricault. While the others were a generation younger, David (1748-1825) and Prud'hon were almost exact contemporaries and therefore rivals. The older David despised the softness and sentimentality of Prud'hon's work, but it was precisely these qualities that appealed to the ladies of Napoleon's court (including both of his Empresses, Josephine and Marie-Louise). Prud'hon's openness to emotional content also pleased Delacroix and Géricault, who both admired and were influenced by his art. Prud'hon came from humble origins. He was born plain Pierre Prudon in Cluny in Burgundy, the thirteenth child of a stonecutter. The Pierre-Paul part of his working name was intended to suggest artistic kinship with Peter Paul Rubens; the fancified surname gives the vague suggestion of a landed or noble background.

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, L'enfant au chien

Lithograph, 1822

Prud'hon hardly qualifies as a prolific printmaker. He made two etchings, and three authenticated and two attributed lithographs, and that seems to be it. Of the three undoubted original lithographs, I have one, a work of great style and authority. Entitled L'enfant au chien, it depicts the son of Maréchal Gouvion Saint-Cyr, and relates to a painting of the same subject exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1822. The lithographic stones for this and another lithograph entitled La lecture were acquired in 1864 by M. Galichon for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which issued new editions (although possibly the works were never formally editioned prior to this). La lecture was included in the Gazette in 1870; although L'enfant au chien bears a credit to the Gazette as well as to the printer Bertauts, I can't find any record of it actually appearing in the revue. It is not listed in Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux's thorough and scrupulous catalogue, Les Estampes de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts. If anyone has access to the Gazette for 1869 and 1870, I would be grateful for any enlightenment as to whether L'enfant au chien is in there or not.

Alfred Taiée, Tombeau de Mlle C. Mayer et de Prud'hon

Etching, 1879

The date of 1822 is a notable one, because it means this tender study of a boy and his dog was executed while Prud'hon himself was suffering intolerable agony. Prud'hon had married at the age of 19. The marriage was unhappy, although the couple had six children, and his wife was eventually admitted to an insane asylum. From 1803, Prud'hon's intimate partner in both life and art was his ex-pupil Constance Mayer. There's a good post on their relationship here, at The Jade Sphinx. Supposedly, on her deathbed, Mme Prud'hon begged him never to re-marry, and he vowed that he would not. When Constance Mayer heard the news, she went to Prud'hon's studio, picked up his cutthroat razor, and slit her throat. Prud'hon was devastated by Mayer's death, sank into depression, and died himself in 1823. The lovers were buried in the same tomb in Père Lachaise; I have an etching of this by Alfred Taiée.

Engraving by an unknown hand after a drawing by

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon of Constance Mayer, c.1805

The remaining images in this post are etchings after Prud'hon, Mayer, or Prud'hon and Mayer combined. One of the puzzles with Prud'hon is exactly where his work stops and Constance Mayer's starts. He seems to have enjoyed drawing more than painting, and left a good deal of the execution of his large allegorical paintings to her; so much so that some authorities now credit the works to both artists. Constance Mayer was also an artist in her own right, with her own studio and her own pupils, and her work under her own name is certainly very similar to that of Prud'hon.

Léopold Flameng (1831-1911), etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Vénus au bain, ou L'innocence

1863

Adolphe Lalauze (1838-1906), etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and Constance Mayer, L'innocence préfère l'amour à la richesse

1876

William Barbotin (1861-1931), etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, L'amour et l'innocence

1903

Arthur Mayeur (1871-1919), etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Nymphe et amours

1903

Prud'hon began to study drawing at the age of 16, at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Dijon under François Devosge. In 1780 he entered the Royal Academy, then based in the Louvre. Two years after that, he won the a Burgundian three year scholarship to live and study in Rome. The years he then spent in Italy were crucial to his artistic development. According to the J. Paul Getty Museum biography, "his experience in Italy from 1784 to 1787, when he absorbed the softness and sensuality of Correggio's works and Leonardo da Vinci's sfumato, gave his art its distinctive style." His mastery of tonal effects in academic figure drawing has never been equalled.

Achille Gilbert (1828-1899), etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Portrait de Millevoye

1880

Jules G. Romain, etching after

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Portrait de Mlle Pierre de Vellefrey

1907

There's a good essay on Prud'hon by Fred Stern here, relating to the Prud'hon exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1998.

Eugène Gaujean (1850-1900), etching after

Constance Mayer, Le rêve de bonheur

1879

Constance Mayer (full name, Marie-Françoise-Constance Mayer La Martinière) was born in Paris in 1775, seventeen years Prud'hon's junior. Like him, she had a meteoric rise in the art world, first exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1796. She studied under Joseph-Benoît Suvée and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and admired Prud'hon's artistic adversary Jacques-Louis David. Why in 1803 she would need to enrol as a pupil with Prud'hon is not immediately apparent, and it seems likely that the status of élève was a convenient mask for their affair, rather than a full master-pupil relationship. It was Constance who suffered from this subterfuge, because it meant that she was always viewed in the shadow of the master. No one knows how many drawings and paintings now attributed to Prud'hon are actually the work of Constance Mayer. Her 1805 painting Vénus et l’Amour endormis caressés et réveillés par les Zéphirs, ou Le sommeil de Vénus, for instance, initially bought by the Empress Josephine, when it passed into the collection of Sir William Wallace, had Mayer's signature removed and replaced by that of Prud'hon. Apart from anything else, a nude by a female artist was not to be thought of. The painting remains in the Wallace Collection, now reattributed to Mayer, though their description still maintains that Prud'hon provided the "initial ideas": i.e. he did the preparatory drawings and Mayer merely painted his design.

Augustin Mongin (1843-1911), etching after

Constance Mayer, Portrait de Mlle Sophie Lordon

1879

Constance Mayer killed herself in Prud'hon's Paris studio on 26 May 1821. He withered without her, and died of consumption on 16 February 1823.

MOPP - the case of Max Oppenheimer

The painter and printmaker Max Oppenheimer (MOPP) was born in Vienna in 1885. From 1900-1903 he studied at the Vienna Academy, and from 1903-1906 at the Prague Academy. He was one of the 16 founders of the modernist Neukunstgruppe, whose central figure was Egon Schiele, with whom Oppenheimer shared a studio in 1910. Oppenheimer was also influenced by Gustav Klimt, and especially by Oskar Kokoschka. From 1911 he began using the pseudonym MOPP, formed from his initial and the first three letters of his surname. In 1912 he moved to Berlin. Medically unfit for military service, Max Oppenheimer spent the years of WWI in Switzerland. Over the years Oppenheimer's art absorbed the aesthetics of Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada, and Cubism, while remaining always rooted in his own personality. 

Max Oppenheimer, Quartett

Etching, 1932

Music and musicians were a constant source of inspiration for Max Oppenheimer, as in his etching Quartett, which infuses Cubist technique with Expressionist vitality. With the rise of the Nazis, the position of Oppenheimer, who was a Jew, a homosexual, and a "degenerate" artist, became perilous. His works were removed from German museums in 1937. The following year he emigrated to the USA, via Switzerland. Max Oppenheimer lived for the rest of his life in New York, where he died in 1954.

The rise and fall of the Expressionist woodcut

The woodcut is the archetypal Expressionist medium - vital, energetic, powerful. One thinks of artists such as Erich Heckel, Frans Masereel, Emil Nolde, Max Beckman.

Certainly since the 1870s and the rise of Impressionism, art movements have come and gone with incredible speed. It is interesting to see how quickly the Jugendstil (German art nouveau) colour woodcuts, that make such an interesting western comment on the Japanese woodcut tradition, become overwhelmed by the new Expressionist mode - a jagged, rough-edged, almost brutal aesthetic, which nevertheless proves able to accommodate motifs as traditional as deer grazing in a landscape. All of the images in this post are taken from issues of the Viennese art revue Die Graphischen Künste. The first comes from 1910, and is I think an exceptional example of a Jugendstil woodcut. It's an incredibly strong yet subtle image, and for once I think my photograph does it justice.

Heine Rath (German, 1873-1920), Eisblumen

Woodcut, 1910

Leap across the First World War, and what do we find? A completely new world. The images are black-and-white, stark and uncompromising. Some of the artists are politically engaged, some are not, but in every case there is a rejection of decorative appeal in favour of graphic strength. I won't try to comment on each one, but simply let the images roll. It's interesting to see how the same aesthetic can be applied to the cityscape, landscape, animals, people, with such powerful results. But just as this movement took its momentum from the continental fracture of the Great War, it received its death blow from the rise of the Nazis. Faced with such horrendous ideas and actions - and the suppression of dissident artists - Expressionism had neither the vocabulary nor the means to survive.

Erwin Lang (Austrian, 1886-1962)

Turm von St. Stephan in Wien

Woodcut, 1932

Emma Bormann (1887-1974)

Aus Hollande (Godlinze)

Woodcut, 1922

Adolf Weber-Scheld (German, 1892-?)

Rehe

Woodcut, 1931

Ernst Hrabal (Czech, 1886-1969)

Pietà

Woodcut, 1925

Elfriede Miller-Hauenfels (Austrian, 1893-1962)

Christus auf dem Ölberg

Woodcut, 1922

I am particularly interested in the religious connotations in the two cuts above, and the one below. In a way one thinks of Expressionism as a post-religious movement of the Machine Age. But the woodcut by Hrabal shows how even the landscape could evoke religious feeling, while that of Miller-Hauenfels reimagines the torment of Christ on the Mount of Olives in twentieth-century terms. As for what is happening in the image below by Walter Clemens Schmidt - who knows?

Walter Clemens Schmidt (German, 1890-1979)

Glückschiff

Woodcut, 1925

Robert Philippi (Austrian, 1877-1959)

Törichte Jungfrau

Woodcut, 1930

Robert Philippi, the creator of this foolish virgin, taught Egon Schiele wood engraving and etching.

Jan Rambousek (Czech, 1896-1976)

Karrenzieher

Woodcut, 1933

Note the billboard advert for the Prague football club FK Viktoria in the background.

Karl Rössing (Austrian, 1897-1987)

Einwandfrei Prozessführung

Woodcut, 1928

Johannes Wohlfarht (Austrian, 1900-1975)

Blindenzug

Woodcut, 1933

The tone of Expressionist art - always satirical and sarcastic - became more bitter by the year, as fascist ideas first appeared then blossomed then overtook sane society. This woodcut by Johannes Wohlfarht (or Wohlfart, sources vary).Titled Procession of the blind (or, perhaps, The blind leading the blind), it is a mordant political satire for the year 1933, which saw the Nazis rise to power in Germany. Johannes Wohlfahrt was greatly influenced by the anarchist Herbert Müller-Guttenbrunn. Before the rise of the Nazis Johannes Wohlfahrt's art was mostly concerned with the plight of the downtrodden and exploited; after, he sought refuge in religion, and most of his work after 1930 is religious in nature, albeit still often with a satirical point to make.

Ernst Klotz: a case of mistaken identity

The Leipzig painter and printmaker Ernst Klotz was born in 1863. He studied under Franz von Defregger in Munich and Carl Frithjof Smith in Weimar. In 1895-1896 Klotz experimented with coloured etchings printed from one plate à la poupée, which he exhibited with the Munich Secession and in Vienna. Ernst Klotz was a remarkably accomplished etcher, as the three etchings in this post, all published in 1895 in the art revues Pan and Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, show.

Ernst Klotz, Zigeunerknabe

Etching, 1895

Ernst Klotz, Mädchenkopf

Etching, 1895

Ernst Klotz, Zwei Studienköpfe

Etching, 1895

Like many Jugendstil artists, Ernst Klotz made no firm distinction between art and craft. He made designs for metalwork, furniture, and interiors, but his chief interest was in printmaking and graphic techniques. In the 1890s Ernst Klotz developed a new method of printmaking, in which the image is painted onto a metal plate, and engraved directly from this original artwork. He called this planographic technique malertypie. I confess I do not fully understand how it worked; it seems to be a cross between etching and lithography, and the finished results look more like a litho than anything else. It appears to have been a versatile, painterly technique, which had the advantage of producing a plate as durable as a conventional letterpress plate. However it did not catch on, and so far as I know the only artists to use it were Klotz himself and two of his associates, Thomas Theodor Heine and Oscar Leonhard Geyer. I don't have a malertypie by Klotz, but some can be seen on the website of the Leipzig Museum (if you can make the website work, which I have found difficult with Safari). I do have an example of a malertypie by Geyer, entitled Blumenstück: Studie in E. Klotz' Malertypie. This was published to accompany an article on the technique in Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, Neue Folge IX, 1898, entitled Eine Neue Graphische Technik.

Oscar Leonhard Geyer, Blumenstück: Studie in E. Klotz' Malertypie

Malertypie, 1898

Because he worked simply as E. Klotz, a great deal of confusion has arisen around Ernst Klotz's etchings, with many museums and galleries attributing them wrongly to the Austrian sculptor Edmund Klotz, as I did when I originally posted the etching of the gypsy boy. I have to thank Erika Esau, the librarian at the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for her help in sorting out the muddle.

Shapes of colour

The exhibition Vormen van de kleur at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 20.11.1966-15.1.1967 was curated by W. A. L. Beeren. The exhibition title was given in English as New Shapes of Color. The work of 37 artists representing the Hard-edge abstract movement was shown, including Josef Albers, Max Bill, Victor Vasarely, Alexander Liberman, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, Robyn Denny, Robert Indiana, and Donald Judd. Four artists - Kelly, Bonies, Pfahler, and Turnbull - contributed original screenprints (serigraphs) to the catalogue, which was printed in an edition of 2200 copies. My copy of this delightful work has one further interest, in that it comes from the library of the American artists Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn.

The ownership stamp of Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn

Ellsworth Kelly has long been a hero of mine, and I like the deceptive simplicity of this print. Apparently this was the second screenprint he made, and I'm sorry my wonky photograph doesn't do its crisp lines justice. Born in Newburgh, New York, in 1923, Kelly is still alive and creating art. From June 5 to September 3 this year the Metropolitan Museum in New York will be exhibiting Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings. For those who think of him only as a severely minimalist painter and sculptor, the plant drawings will come as an amazing revelation. They show how closely he looks at the natural world, and how he extrapolates the shapes, curves, and divided spaces of his abstract art from that close observation. I was bowled over by the joint exhibition of plant drawings by Kelly and Matisse at the Pompidou Centre a few years ago, and this one will be unmissable, for those who can get to it.

Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled

Screenprint, 1966

The Dutch artist Bob Bonies was born in the Hague in 1937. He studied art in The Hague and Stockholm. His art looks back to Mondrian, Albers, and the group de Stijl as well as sideways to contemporaries such as Ellsworth Kelly and Olle Baertling (with whom he was closely associated in the 1960s). Bob Bonies has restricted himself to just four colours plus white: the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, and green as the complementary colour of red. The de Stijl motto "Less is more" is equally applicable to the pared-down yet perfectly balanced art of Bonies.

Bob Bonies, Untitled

Screenprint, 1966

Georg-Karl Pfahler was born in Emetzheim in 1926. Pfahler studied at the Fine Art Academies of Nuremberg and Stuttgart. Initially influenced by Action Painting and Art Informel, in the 1960s Georg-Karl Pfahler turned to Hard-Edge Abstraction, influenced by artists such as Josef Albers. Georg-Karl Pfahler was the only German Hard-Edge painter. He also worked in three dimensions, and was involved in numerous architectural projects. He died in Emetzheim in 2002.

Georg-Karl Pfahler, Untitled

Screenprint, 1966

The Scottish minimalist sculptor and painter William Turnbull was born in Dundee in 1922. After WWII, in which he served in the RAF, Turnbull attended the Slade. Being out of sympathy with the Neo-Romanticism of the painting department at that time, Turnbull changed over to sculpture, where he befriended Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson. In 1950 Turnbull and Paolozzi had a joint show at the Hanover Gallery in London. In New York in 1957 William Turnbull met Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, who became a close friend.

William Turnbull, Untitled

Screenprint, 1966

The text of the catalogue consists of a short introduction by Edy de Wilde, the director of the Stedelijk Museum, an essay by W. A. L. Beeren, the four screenprints, and individual pages on each of the featured artists. A nice touch at the end is a list of the artists' addresses - almost all of them give their home addresses rather than a dealer or gallery.

German and Austrian portraits of the 1890s

Because this post is a round-up of disparate artists and styles, I'm not going to give more details about the artists than their dates of birth and death. Instead I want to concentrate on the varied ways in which they have tried to express the individual humanity of their subjects. As in my previous post on German landscape, all the examples are taken from the Leipzig art revue Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst. Although all are portraits, only one, the self-portrait of Hans Thoma, identifies its subject. The rest are presented as anonymous representative types, though often with a very powerful individual essence. 

Robert Raudner (1854-1910)

Kopf eines alten Mannes

Etching, 1892

A traditional approach for a traditional subject, in this strong depiction of a man who has known a life of hard work, and perhaps some disappointment.

Josef Damberger (1867-1951)

Am häuslichen Herd

Etching, 1894

This strongly-composed etching by Josef Damberger intrigues me. You get a real sense of family relationships and tensions in the group dynamics of the picture. The title means something like At the Domestic Hearth. The mother and daughter are there, with the child looking yearningly out of the picture, grandfather and grandmother are looking on, at an emotional remove from the others. Where is the father? This picture seems to pre-figure the stark social conscience of Expressionist artists such as Käthe Kollwitz

Ferdinand Schmutzer (1870-1928)

Holländisches Mädchen

Etching, 1896

I find the intimacy of some of these scenes very touching - especially Ferdinand Schmutzer's tenderly-observed Dutch girl, Bernhard Pankok's twilit mother and child, and, further down the post, Alfred Cossman's housewife quietly sat over her mending.

Bernhard Pankok (1872-1943)

Frau mit Kind

Mezzotint, 1898

Otto Rasch (1862-1952)

Unterbrochene Andacht

Lithograph, 1898

This old lady has been interrupted at her devotions, and she doesn't look best pleased about it.

Heinrich Wolff (1875-1940)

Mädchenkopf

Etching, 1897

Heinrich Wolff (1875-1940)

Porträt

Etching, 1898

Heinrich Wolff (1875-1940)

Studienkopf

Mezzotint, 1899

I wonder if Heinrich Wolff's Studienkopf is, like Hans Thoma's etching below, a self-portrait; certainly his Porträt must be a recognisable figure, though I don't know which senior German artist this is.

Hans Thoma (1839-1924)

Selbstbildnis

Etching, 1898

Alfred Cossmann (1870-1951)

Porträtstudie

Etching, 1899

Heinrich Reifferscheid (1872-1945)

Porträt

Etching, 1898

Marie Stein (active in Paris 1899)

Porträtstudie

Etching, 1899

I haven't been able to find out anything about Marie Stein. Although she has a French first name, I think she was probably German. There's quite a bit of writing very faintly incised with a drypoint needle in the top left of the image, but I haven't been able to make any of it out, partly because it's all in reverse.

Paul Hey (1867-1952)

Porträtstudie

Etching, 1899

If the very first image in this post, Robert Raudner's old man, had a timeless quality, this fashionable woman by Paul Hey is the very image of 1890s femininity. I love the drama that the unusual upward-looking perspective gives this, as if the artist were lying on the ground looking up at her.

Georg Jahn (1869-1941)

Porträt einer alten Frau

Etching, 1900

The detail in this etching by Georg Jahn is quite incredible. You really feel that this kindly old lady might start speaking to you.

Hanns Fechner (1860-1931)

Porträt

Lithograph, 1900

The lithographs by Hanns Fechner (above) and Rudolph Schulte im Hofe (below) both approach their subjects at an angle, allowing us the sense that we are observing someone who doesn't know that we are looking, and is lost in her own thoughts.

Rudolf Schulte im Hofe (1865-1928)

Porträt

Lithograph, 1901

Hermann Struck (1876-1944)

Porträt eines alten Mannes

Etching, 1901

And last of all, Hermann Struck's magnificent etching of an elderly Jew, possibly the artist's father. There's a real sense of emotional connection here, and of the weight of history. "Next year in Jerusalem," seems to sum up his thoughts. Hermann Struck (born Chaim Aaron ben David) was himself an early settler in what was then Palestine, immigrating to Haifa in 1923.