Schad's interest in portrait drawing stemmed from his encounters with the art of Raphael and Ingres during the mid 1920s. In 1928 he moved to Berlin and became a leading light in the Neue Sachlichkeit movement until circa 1935. "Here, until the early 30s, he did pen drawings and oils which earned him a reputation as extreme representative of 'New Objectivity'. The work produced during those years consists of portraits which, while they may seem chilly, re-create the field of tension - mainly erotic - in which the subjects led their lives, together with erotic drawings and scenes from the life of the Bohemian world Schad inhibited" (German Art in the 20th Century, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 498).

"Celebrated for his pristine, coldly detailed portrait paintings, Christian Schad devoted his drawings to scenes from café life, homosexual's clubs and sexual narratives. For the exquisite recording of minutiae that characterises his paintings, he substituted in drawing a linear style that concentrated on nuanced movements of continuous outlines, attenuated and constantly on the verge of breaking. Splattered ink provides shading and creates a dialectic of depth and flatness against which the outlined, reserved figures become ironically volumetric". (R. Heller, Art in Germany, 1909-36, London, 1990, p. 219).

To be included in the forthcoming Christian Schad catalogue raisonné being prepared by Guenter Richter