Karl Mordstein

Indistinct Clear - Fluctuating ambivalence -

1982

Karl Ludwig Mordstein (1937 Füssen - 2006 Wilszhofen), Field 1983. Color etching, copy 13/65, 22.5 x 28 cm (image), 40 x 45 cm (sheet), 43 x 48 cm (frame), titled, numbered, monogram...

Jörg Olberg (*1956 Dresden), Agony, 1987. etching, E.A. (edition of 30), 24 x 17 cm (image), 46 x 37 cm (sheet), each signed in pencil lower right "Olberg" and dated "IX [19]87", inscribed lower left "E.A. [Epreuve d'Artiste]". - minimal crease and dust stains in the broad margin - The architecture of decay - About the artwork Jörg Olberg draws here the sum of his artistic study of the Berlin ruins, which were still present in the cityscape well into the 80s. With his work "Agony" he creates an allegory of decay. Positioned in the landscape of ruins, a ruined house grows before the viewer, rising like the Tower of Babel into the sky, its roof and gable brightly illuminated by the sun. But already the roof shows mostly only the rafters, and as the gaze is drawn further down, the building visibly disintegrates, the beams protruding in all directions looking like splintered bones. Slowly but inexorably - in agony - the house will collapse in on itself and become nothing more than the burial mound of itself. At the same time, the small-scale stone composition and the plaster form a pattern-like ornamentation of decay. The tension in the picture is fed by the counter-movement of growth and collapse, which is heightened by the dramatic formation of clouds. The swirls of clouds are reminiscent of a world landscape...

Albert Ernst (1909 Fronhofen - 1996 Hamburg), View of a Coastal Town, etching, 30 x 37 cm (picture), 45 x 50.5 cm (frame), signed in pencil lower right "Albert Ernst", framed under g...

Max Clarenbach (1880 Neuss - Cologne 1952), Evening. Etching, 18 x 41 cm (platemark), 33.5 x 57 cm (frame), inscribed "Abend" in pencil at lower left, signed and dated "M. Clarenbach. 28.III.[19]09". Framed and mounted under glass. - Somewhat browned and slightly foxed. About the artwork The horizontally elongated etching depicts the panoramic view of a small town as seen from the other side of the river. There are gabled houses on the left and a mighty church spire on the right. The bourgeois houses and the large religious building indicate the urban character. These buildings are rendered in dark tones to emphasise the lighter row of houses in the centre of the picture, closer to the water. The chiaroscuro contrast creates two parallel planes that open up a space for the imagination of what the city could be. The imagination is stimulated by the almost entirely dark, barely recognisable buildings, while the arm of the river leading into the city further stimulates the imagination. However, as the silhouette of the city as a whole is reflected in the water, the parallel planes are perceived as a band of houses that stretches across the entire horizontality of the etching and seems to continue beyond the borders of the picture. The reflection has almost the same intensity as the houses themselves, so that the band of buildings merges with their reflection to form the dominant formal unit of the picture. Only the parallel horizontal hatching creates the convincing impression of seeing water, demonstrating Max Clarenbach's mastery of the etching needle. The water is completely motionless, the reflection unclouded by the slightest movement of the waves, creating a symmetry within the formal unity of the cityscape and its reflection that goes beyond the motif of a mere cityscape. A pictorial order is established that integrates everything in the picture and has a metaphysical character as a structure of order that transcends the individual things. This pictorial order is not only relevant in the pictorial world, but the picture itself reveals the order of the reality it depicts. Revealing the metaphysical order of reality in the structures of its visibility is what drives Clarenbach as an artist and motivates him to return to the same circle of motifs. The symmetry described is at the same time inherent an asymmetry that is a reflection on art: While the real cityscape is cut off at the top of the picture, two chimneys and above all the church tower are not visible, the reflection illustrates reality in its entirety. The reflection occupies a much larger space in the picture than reality itself. Since antiquity, art has been understood primarily as a reflection of reality, but here Clarenbach makes it clear that art is not a mere appearance, which can at best be a reflection of reality, but that art has the potential to reveal reality itself. The revealed structure of order is by no means purely formalistic; it appears at the same time as the mood of the landscape. The picture is filled with an almost sacred silence. Nothing in the picture evokes a sound, and there is complete stillness. There are no people in Clarenbach's landscape paintings to bring action into the picture. Not even we ourselves are assigned a viewing position in the picture, so that we do not become thematic subjects of action. Clarenbach also refrains from depicting technical achievements. The absence of man and technology creates an atmosphere of timelessness. Even if the specific date proves that Clarenbach is depicting something that happened before his eyes, without the date we would not be able to say which decade, or even which century, we are in. The motionless stillness, then, does not result in time being frozen in the picture, but rather in a timeless eternity that is nevertheless, as the title "Abend" (evening), added by Clarenbach himself, makes clear, a phenomenon of transition. The landscape of the stalls is about to be completely plunged into darkness, the buildings behind it only faintly discernible. The slightly darkened state of the sheet is in keeping with this transitional quality, which also lends the scene a sepia quality that underlines its timelessness. And yet the depiction is tied to a very specific time. Clarenbach dates the picture to the evening of 28 March 1909, which does not refer to the making of the etching, but to the capture of the landscape's essence in the landscape itself. If the real landscape is thus in a state of transition, and therefore something ephemeral, art reveals its true nature in that reality, subject to the flow of phenomena, is transferred to an eternal moment, subject to a supra-temporal structure of order - revealed by art. Despite this supratemporality, the picture also shows the harbingers of night as the coming darkening of the world, which gives the picture a deeply melancholy quality, enhanced by the browning of the leaf. It is the philosophical content and the lyrical-melancholic effect of the graphic that give it its enchanting power. Once we are immersed in the image, it literally takes a jerk to disengage from it. This etching, so characteristic of Max Clarenbach's art, is - not least because of its dimensions - a major work in his graphic oeuvre. About the artist Born into poverty and orphaned at an early age, the artistically gifted young Max Clarenbach was discovered by Andreas Achenbach and admitted to the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the age of 13. "Completely penniless, I worked for an uncle in a cardboard factory in the evenings to pay for my studies.” - Max Clarenbach At the academy he studied under Arthur Kampf, among others, and in 1897 was accepted into Eugen Dücker...

Trees (Trees in Circle) Etching & drypoint with monotype inking, 1953-1955 Signed in pencil An unrecorded trial proof, printed on heavy wove proofing paper at Atelier 17, before the ...

Sunrise. 1965, paper, etching, 53x52 cm Dzidra Ezergaile (1926-2013) Born in Riga. School years alternate with summer work in the countryside. In 1947, she began her studies at the ...

David Shapiro (American, b. 1922) Waterfall I (de-accessioned from the Denver Art Museum), 1979 Spit-bite etching, drypoint and carborundrum on Lanaq...

Signed, titled and numbered from the edition of 50. Aquatint and sugarlift etching. Bozon's prints are often a balance between abstraction and landscape, which he creates with drypo...