Strasse, from: Radierwerk I

A collection’s many journeys
The works in this family collection were carefully brought together by a passionate collector and enthusiast of the arts over a period of almost thirty years, starting in the early 1960s. German art of the 1920s was at the heart of the collector’s interest, and included the social satire of George Grosz (lot 147) and Otto Dix, as well as important works of the Neue Sachlichkeit, Dada and Constructivism. Most of the artists represented in this collection, who had lived through the horrors of World War I and established themselves as artists during the Weimar Republic, found themselves defamed as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazi regime. Some were driven into exile, such as George Grosz, and many of those who remained in Germany were banned from working. Otto Freundlich was murdered at Sobibor concentration camp on the day of his arrival in 1943.
Much of the artists’ work had to be hidden from the ‘Entartete Kunst’-purge, and many of the paintings, works on paper and prints in this collection are rare survivors of this feverish and fascinating, yet doomed period of German art.
Amongst the printed works, the etchings and drypoints of Otto Dix stand at the centre of the collection, oscillating – therein representative of the collector’s wider tastes and choices – between unsparing realism, fierce social criticism, collage-like elements inspired by the Dada-movement, and the surreal and the grotesque, all served up with a generous dose of black humour (see lots 147-153). A similar spirit, yet expressed entirely in their personal styles, is found for example in the works of Karl Hubbuch (lot 154) and Heinrich Hörle (lot 155 & 156). It is fitting that the collection includes Conrad Felixmüller’s portrait of Otto Dix (lot 146): it was the younger Felixmüller who in 1920 introduced Dix to the etching medium. In fact, the portrait is a collaborative work of the two artists, as it was Dix who etched his own work depicted in the image onto the plate. It is thus also his first ever etching.
Constructivism is represented by two extremely rare portfolios of the interwar period, Johannes Molzahn’s Zeit-Taster (lot 157) and Oskar Fischer’s 12 Linolschnitte (lot 158), while the equally rare print series Die Zeichen by the older Otto Freundlich (lot 153) , with its more fluid abstraction and figuration, is perhaps best understood in the context of the brief flourishing of Orphism before World War I.

The works in this outstanding collection were bought after much consideration from a few trusted gallerists, occasionally at auction and, whenever possible, from the artists themselves. Some emerging artists of the post-war period, for example Friedensreich Hundertwasser (lots 122 & 123), were supported with occasional purchases of a work, but above all with boundless generosity and hospitality. The collector would drive through the night across Germany and Switzerland to visit artist friends, attend museum openings or see auction previews. Each new purchase was shown to the family and explained and discussed before finding its place on the walls of the family home.
This was not investment, this was a ceaseless passion. The collection was to be enjoyed amongst friends and family at home, but also by the general public – no museum loan request was declined, and as the reputation of the rarities in this private collection grew, more museum loan requests would follow. There was a constant stream of shippers arriving at the door collecting loans for museums across Germany and the United States. The collection’s journey has continued for another thirty years in the hands of the collector’s family after his passing. Some of the masterpieces in the collection found their way to prestigious museum collections, while others are now being sold, so that they can continue on the next phase of their journey.

The present, rare drypoint Strasse of 1920 is closely related to Otto Dix’s painting with collage Prager Strasse of the same year, now at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The present print shows the subject in reverse, with some changes, clarifications and omissions. At the centre of the composition is a beggar seated on the pavement of a busy street. He has lost both feet and possibly his right hand. The scene is depicted from an oblique viewpoint above. As a result, the figures of the passers-by are only partially seen: the foot and part of the lower body of a woman at lower left, a seemingly headless body in a coat (with the feet pointing backwards), a neck and head with a monocle peering at a shop window (possibly a self-portrait), an arm with a bejewelled hand dropping a coin into the hand of the beggar, and another arm with a walking stick at lower right. Apart from the beggar, the only other complete figure is the man at lower centre, whose body however is itself a fragment: he has lost the entire lower part of his anatomy from the belly down and is pushing himself along on a platform with wheels. In 1920, two years after the end of World War I, men with terrible war injuries must have been a common site, especially in the big cities. The partially visible bodies of the other figures - their hands, feet, legs and arms – heighten the awareness of the missing limbs of the beggar and maimed man below. The theme of the fragmentation of the body is continued in the shopfronts in the background. The shop on the left seems to trade in prosthetic limbs: a mannequin with a missing arm is seen next to a large mechanical leg, a pair of female breast are incongruously peering out from the window at upper right, a large phallic shape is visible at lower left. The window to the right belongs to an optician and has some spectacles and monocles laid out, as well as a window display in the shape of a giant eye. The optician’s is a reminder of the many who lost their eyesight in the war, while the huge eye staring back at us reflects on our own position, as we gape at this disturbing scene.
The collage element is less pronounced in the print than in the painting, yet the fragmentation of the visual components is clearly indebted to the collage technique of the Dada movement. The image is executed in a deliberately naïve and cartoonish, almost caricature style – remarkable considering what a technically masterful draughtsman and painter Otto Dix was. It was his unique ability to depict the most horrific scenes of misery and cruelty with an acerbic sense of humour, thereby avoiding any sense of pathos or sentimentality.

In the graphic medium, Strasse is Dix's first depiction of men mutilated in war. Within the same year, he returned to the subject in three other prints: Kriegskrüppel (K. 6), Streichholzhändler (K. 11) and Kartenspieler (K. 16). It is also interesting to see Heinrich Hörle's treatment of the same subject in lots 155 and 156 of this sale.