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Group Portrait, Eden Bar (Gruppenbildnis Edenbar) (H. 277)
Details
MAX BECKMANN
Group Portrait, Eden Bar (Gruppenbildnis Edenbar) (H. 277)
woodcut, 1923, on thick simile Japon, signed in pencil, from the edition of 40, with full margins, soft creasing, minor soiling along the margin edges and paper fibers lightly rubbed along the extreme margin edges, otherwise in good condition
B. 19½ x 19 5/8 in. (494 x 498 mm.)
S. 27 5/8 x 22 in. (701 x 560 mm.)
Group Portrait, Eden Bar (Gruppenbildnis Edenbar) (H. 277)
woodcut, 1923, on thick simile Japon, signed in pencil, from the edition of 40, with full margins, soft creasing, minor soiling along the margin edges and paper fibers lightly rubbed along the extreme margin edges, otherwise in good condition
B. 19½ x 19 5/8 in. (494 x 498 mm.)
S. 27 5/8 x 22 in. (701 x 560 mm.)
Provenance
I.B. Neumann, Frankfurt
Alan Frumkin, Chicago
Alan Frumkin, Chicago
Special notice
This lot is exempt from Sales Tax.
Further details
The upper class society, who Beckmann portrayed in their solidly flat unmasked convention again and again, is the subject of his biggest and perhaps most sophisticated woodcut. Three elegantly dressed, cosmopolitan people are placed in the bar of the most famous hotel in Berlin. The woman on the left is Johanna Loeb with Elisa Lutz, a singer from Argentina, on the right (also seen together in the lithograph Zwei Frauen H.245). The man in the middle is perhaps one of their husbands. Three musicians are in the background.
Beckmann uses the woodcut technique in a very individual way, as did Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde and the other expressionists in their ways. He is neither trying to achieve a simplification of the ornament nor drastic deformation of the human figure, but rather as most accurate an objective or unexaggerated depiction as possible. He envisions vanity and isolation in the three figures - elegant yet empty.
Beckmann uses the woodcut technique in a very individual way, as did Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde and the other expressionists in their ways. He is neither trying to achieve a simplification of the ornament nor drastic deformation of the human figure, but rather as most accurate an objective or unexaggerated depiction as possible. He envisions vanity and isolation in the three figures - elegant yet empty.