Joseph Maria Olbrich

Ottokar Mascha Folio, plate 9: "Darmstadt Poster"by Joseph Maria Olbricht

1915

Contributors to Gerlach & Schenk’s publications valued design and innovation in the graphic arts just as much as they examined allegories as subject matter for exploration. Here, Gus...

Gustav Klimt created this image for inclusion in Gerlach & Schenk’s Allegorien the year before he formed the Vienna Secession. While this design is similar to his other inclusions, L...

As an artist trained in the applied arts, Gustav Klimt valued all forms of art, including the graphic arts. This final design from 1896 for inclusion in Allegorien published by Gerlach & Schenk demonstrates respect for artistic precedent and for a wide range of media and technique. The publication was printed in an unknown number of copies. Klimt’s rendering in latin of the title, “SCVLPTVR.,” with three-dimensional effect on the wall, is a figurative allusion to this medium as well as a literal reference to Ancient Rome. By doing the same with his signature and date in roman numerals on the right hand side of the image, Klimt places himself, The Artist, firmly in this linear and legitimizing context of art history and as its modern standard-bearer. Playing on Classical mythology and the story of Pygmalion, in which a statue comes to life, Klimt presents his modern Venus holding an apple. Klimt’s Venus exhibits a curvilinear softness; there are no angles. Klimt deftly shows the possibilities in a graphic image to give life to dark, wavy hair and tenderness to swelling breasts and belly. To further emphasize the allegory of thriving modern art, he contrasts his Venus with the cold, hard ancient classical head whose eyes are vacuous and whose hair is but a stylized mass of curls. Klimt’s living Venus stands in front of the large bust and large classical pillar upon which is a sculpture of a Sphinx and a Greek Attic bust. As if a gallery to represent sculpture’s “best of” through the ages, the upper horizontal panel includes bust depictions in marble, cast metal and wood...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figu...

Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) - La Guillotine Lithograph from 1977. The edition of 103/150. On Arches paper with watermark. Dimensions of work: 76 x 56 cm. Hand signed. The work is...

Vintage Soviet Government propaganda lithographic poster titled with Ukrainian text that reads “Corrupt Petliura has sold Ukraine to the Polish landowners. Landowners burned and plundered Ukraine. Death to landowners and Petlyurovites.” Originally issued April 1920 following the Treaty of Warsaw (also the Polish-Ukrainian Agreement). The agreement was a military-economical alliance between the Second Polish Republic, represented by Jozef Pilsudski, and the Ukrainian People’s Republic, represented by Symon Petliura, against Bolshevik Russia. The artwork features Jozef Pilsudski running away with a sack of goods. Good condition. Artist unknown. The Bolshevik Era (1917-1921) was a life and death struggle for the Bolsheviks and their ideology. The propaganda poster...

Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) - Valmy Lithograph from 1977. The edition of 103/150. On Arches paper with watermark. Dimensions of work: 76 x 56 cm. Hand signed. The work is in Exce...

Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) - Torero Original Lithograph from 1968. Dimensions of work: 31 x 24 cm Publisher: André Sauret, Monte Carlo. Printed by: Fernand Mourlot, Paris The wo...