Day & Dream in Modern Germany, 1914–1925

August 26, 2022–February 26, 2023

Gallery 235 and the Sidney S. and Sadie M. Cohen Gallery 234

Day & Dream in Modern Germany, 1914-1945

Humanity seems destined to oscillate forever between devotion to the world of dreams and adherence to the world of reality… If this breathing rhythm of history were to cease, it might signal the death of the spirit.
– Franz Roh, Post-Expressionism: Magical Realism, 1925

Should art show life in all its hope and despair? Or should it imagine a better future? After the disastrous events of World War I (1914-18), these questions took on a new urgency. This exhibition presents prints, drawings, and photographs by German artists, each with their own response. They are divided into two groups: those who critiqued daily life, in this gallery titled “Day;” and those who created fantasy worlds, in the neighboring gallery titled “Dream.” In fact, every work of art is a mix of day and dream.

Day
The attendant at a carnival target-shooting gallery sizes us up as we approach to try our luck. Most of her customers would have had extensive experience with rifles from their military service in World War I. Her penetrating stare reflects Max Beckmann’s own cynical take on former soldiers who played games with deadly weapons. Like Beckmann, the artists in this gallery used representational means to express a deeper truth behind the surface of appearance.

Dream
With her comically large head and arrows for hands, this witch has an otherworldly charm. Paul Klee used the basic elements of line and shape to create whimsical scenes infused with childlike delight. The artworks in this gallery picture alternate realities — imaginary, idealized, or surreal — that offer an escape from daily life.

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

Shooting Gallery (Schießbude), plate 4 from
the portfolio Annual Fair (Jahrmarkt), 1921,
published spring 1922
drypoint

printed by Kunstverlag Franz Hanfstaengl, Munich
published by Verlag der Marées Gesellschaft, R. Piper & Co., Munich

Neumann/Frumkin Collection, purchased with funds provided by the bequest of Morton D. May, by exchange, the bequest of Florene M. Schoenborn in honor of her father, David May, by exchange, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Museum Shop Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Lester A. Crancer Jr., Phoebe and Mark Weil, The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund, Mr. and Mrs. David C. Farrell, the Julian and Hope Edison Print Fund, gift of George Rickey, by exchange, bequest of Helen K. Baer, by exchange, Suzanne and Jerry Sincoff, Museum Shop Fund, by exchange, gift of the Buchholz Gallery, by exchange, Museum Purchase, by exchange, Jerome F. and Judith Weiss Levy, bequest of Horace M. Swope, by exchange, and funds given by Fielding Lewis Holmes through the 1988 Art Enrichment Fund, by exchange 144:2002.4

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

Inspection (Die Musterung), 1914,
published September 1918
Drypoint

published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin

In response to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Max Beckmann volunteered to serve as a medical orderly.

I saw the entire military hospital with all the sick . . . With no sign of emotion the doctors courteously showed me the most horrible wounds. The sharp smell of putrefaction was hovering over everything, despite good ventilation and well-lit rooms. I was able to take it for about an hour and a half, then I had to go out into the open landscape.
—Max Beckmann, September 16, 1914

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

Assault (Sturmangriff), 1916
published September 1919
drypoint

published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin

In mid-jump over a slightly better-made trench, I felt a piercing jolt in the chest—as though I had been hit like a game-bird. With a sharp cry that seemed to cost me all the air I had, I spun on my axis and crashed to the ground. It had got me at last. At the same time as feeling I had been hit, I felt the bullet taking away my life.
—Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel, 1920

Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) survived the injury he received as a German platoon leader during an assault in Favreuil, France. His popular wartime diaries offer a firsthand account of life in the trenches.

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

Morgue (Das Leichenhaus), 1915,
published September 1918
drypoint

published by Paul Cassirer, Berlin

My will to live is stronger now than it ever was, regardless of the terrible things I’ve been through and the fact that I’ve died a few deaths myself by now. But the more often you die, the more intensely you live. I’ve been drawing, and that keeps a man from death and danger.
—Max Beckmann, September 28, 1914

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

The Way Home (Der Nachhauseweg), plate 2
from the series Hell (Die Hölle), 1919
lithograph

printed by C. Naumanns Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main published by I. B. Neumann, Berlin

World War I (1914–1918) made Max Beckmann cynical about German society, a view he expressed in the prints he made after being discharged as a medical orderly in 1915.

There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality. The stronger my determination grows to grasp the unutterable things of this world . . . the harder I try to capture the terrible, thrilling monster of life’s vitality and to confine it, to beat it down and to strangle it with crystal-clear, razor-sharp lines and planes.
—Max Beckmann, “Creative Credo,” September 1918

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

left: plate 4, Striptease (Nackttanz)
right: plate 7, The Beggars (Die Bettler)
from the series Trip to Berlin 1922 (Berliner Reise 1922), 1922
lithographs, artist proofs

printed by C. Naumanns Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main published by I. B. Neumann, Berlin

Berlin . . . how splendid! A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside everything he tires of. Here in the big city you can definitely feel the waves of intellect washing over the life of Berlin society like a sort of bath. An artist here has no choice but to pay attention.
—Robert Walser, “Berlin and the Artist,” 1910

George Grosz,
born 1893, Berlin, Germany
died 1959, Berlin, Germany

Low Dive (Kaschemme), 1916
ink

Writer Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) filled his stories with gritty scenes of Berlin’s prostitutes and petty criminals set in seedy bars, like the one in George Grosz’s Low Dive.

Who’s that standing at the bar, the singing bar, the drinking bar, who’s that smiling into the stinking smoke-filled room? The fattest of all fat swine, the mighty Pums. He’s smiling, or doing what he calls smiling, but his piggy eyes search everywhere. He’d have to fetch a broom and bash a hole in this fug if he wanted to see anything.
—Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929

Museum Shop Fund 159:1990

George Grosz,
born 1893, Berlin, Germany
died 1959, Berlin, Germany

The Good Son, 1932
watercolor

Notice the delicate wrinkles in these figures’ faces and the detail of their clothing, executed in the unforgiving medium of watercolor. George Grosz honed his skillful control of line in satirical depictions of German society, like this elderly son who dutifully escorts his mother and another elderly relative on a walk through a Berlin park. For Grosz, their fussy old-fashioned hats and stiff movements symbolized the conservative values of the German middle classes.

Bequest of Henry V. Putzel 24:1970

Ludwig Meidner,
born 1884, Bernstadt, Germany (now Bierutów, Poland)
died 1966, Darmstadt, Germany

Bohemian Party at W.Z.’s (Bohemerei bei W.Z.), 1915
ink and graphite

Artists gather in the Berlin studio of Willi Zierath (1890–1938) for an all-night party of drinking and conversation. Ludwig Meidner chronicled the social life of Berlin’s
“bohemian” art community in the 1910s, a decade that included World War I. He was closest with the poets of the Café des Westens, nicknamed “Café Meglomania” for the personalities who met there. At gatherings like these, artists exchanged ideas with like-minded writers, directors, and dancers, an inspiring environment that made Berlin the center for new art in Germany.

Gift of Morton D. May 394:1955

August Sander,
born 1876, Herdorf, Germany
died 1964, Cologne, Germany

Farmer from Niederhausen (Bauer aus Niederhausen), 1912
gelatin silver print in an artist mat

I am not concerned with providing commonplace photographs like those made in the finer large-scale studios of the city, but simple, natural portraits that show the subjects in an environment corresponding to their own individuality, portraits that claim the right to be evaluated as works of art and to be used as wall adornments.
—August Sander, advertising brochure, about 1910

August Sander presented his photographs in mats of textured paper, which he signed and inscribed with the work’s title. This is the only photograph by Sander in the Museum’s collection with its original artist mat.

Museum Purchase and the Martin Schweig Memorial Fund for Photography 40:1976

August Sander,
born 1876, Herdorf, Germany
died 1964, Cologne, Germany

left: Farmer’s Child (Bauernkind), 1919, printed in the 1950s–60s
ferrotyped gelatin silver print

center: Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne (Sekretärin beim Westdeutschen Rundfunk, Köln), 1931, printed 1980
gelatin silver print

right: Soldier (Soldat), around 1940, printed later
gelatin silver print

printed by Gunther Sander, Cologne

These are three of the thousands of photographs August Sander made for his life’s work: the unfinished portfolio People of the 20th Century. From farmer’s children to secretaries, soldiers to circus artists, he imagined the portfolio as a collective portrait of Germany. Identified only by their occupation, these individuals represented whole segments of the population.

Sander’s portraits show a changing nation. The androgynous secretary is an example of the New Woman; her masculine hairstyle signals her resistance to traditional gender norms. The young army recruit is one of several portraits of Nazi soldiers and officials in the portfolio. Despite his opposition to the Nazi party, the artist included them to create a complete picture of German society.

(left) Funds given by Jack Ansehl through the 1993 Art Enrichment Fund 3:1994; (center) Museum Shop Fund 29:1995; (right) Museum Purchase and the Martin Schweig Memorial Fund for Photography 41:1976

Karl Blossfeldt’s Art Forms in Nature

Wordy explanations disturb the strong impression that the pictures exert on the viewer.
—Karl Blossfeldt, preface for Magic Garden of Nature, 1932

Karl Blossfeldt was a drawing professor and amateur botanist who made photographic enlargements of magnified plant specimens for his classes. His images were published in 1928 as Art Forms in Nature, which became an international bestseller. This case contains the first German and English editions of the book and two single plates. A modern edition is available in the gallery for viewing.

Karl Blossfeldt. Urformen der Kunst. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1928.

Gift of Leicester Busch Faust and Audrey Faust Wallace 37:1996

Karl Blossfeldt. Art Forms in Nature. 1st English ed. London: A. Zwemmer, 1929.

Gift of the Carnegie Corporation of New York 36:1996

Karl Blossfeldt,
born 1865, Schielo, Germany
died 1932, Berlin, Germany

Saxifraga wilkommniana. Willkomm’s saxifrage. Leaf magnified 8 times (Steinbrech. Blattrosette in 8facher Vergrößerung), plate 47 from Art Forms in Nature (Urformen der Kunst), 1928
rotogravure

published by Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, Berlin

Martin Schweig Memorial Fund for Photography 179:1993

Karl Blossfeldt,
born 1865, Schielo, Germany
died 1932, Berlin, Germany

Acer rufinerve. Maple Tree. Sprouts magnified 10 times (Ahorn. Sprossen in 10facher Vergrößerung), plate 22 from Art Forms in Nature (Urformen der Kunst), 1928
rotogravure

published by Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, Berlin

Martin Schweig Memorial Fund for Photography 180:1993

August Sander,
born 1876, Herdorf, Germany
died 1964, Cologne, Germany

Circus Artistes (Zirkusartisten), 1926–32, printed 1980
gelatin silver print mounted on textured cream paper
printed by Gunther Sander, Cologne

But tell me, who are these acrobats, even a little
more fleeting than we ourselves,
–so urgently, ever since childhood,
wrung by an (oh, for the sake of whom?)
never-contented will? That keeps on wringing them,
bending them, slinging them, swinging them,
throwing them and catching them back;
as though from an oily smoother air,
they come down on the threadbare carpet,
thinned by their everlasting upspringing,
this carpet forlornly lost in the cosmos.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Fifth Elegy,” Duino Elegies, 1923

Museum Shop Fund 28:1995

Otto Dix,
born 1891, Gera, Germany
died 1969, Singen, Germany

Artistes (Artisten), 1921, printed 1922
drypoint

The circus attracted Germans of all classes and occupations, including artists and writers. Death-defying acrobats and trick riders became the unlikely heroes of their art.

. . . the magnificent, colorful costumes, the glittering spangles, the stable smell extending everywhere, the naked limbs of men and women. Breasts, throats, beauty in its most instantly appreciated form, the savage charm of dangerous deeds performed for the pleasure of the blood-thirsty crowd cater to every taste to enflame desire.
— Thomas Mann, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, 1954

The Julian and Hope Edison Print Fund 4:1988

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

The Tightrope Walkers (Die Seiltänzer), plate 8 from the portfolio Annual Fair (Der Jahrmarkt), 1921, published spring 1922
drypoint

printed by Verlag Franz Hanfstaengl, Munich published by Verlag der Marées Gesellschaft, R. Piper & Co., Munich

For philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the tightrope walker symbolized the human condition, precariously balanced between death and transcendence, past and future.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883

Max Pechstein,
born 1881, Zwickau, Germany
died 1955, Berlin, Germany

Self-Portrait with Pipe (Selbstbildnis mit Pfeife), 1921
woodcut

Max Pechstein was one of Germany’s most celebrated modern artists in the year he made this woodcut. That self-assurance radiates from his relaxed expression and the bold contrast of lights and darks, a dramatic effect he achieved without a preparatory sketch.

It was and still is fundamental: to begin the work with the same tools with which it will be ended, without making a preliminary drawing on the wood, stone, or metal. Sketches and drawings done in advance clarify the intention, and with it ready in the head, the requisite tool realizes the idea.
— Max Pechstein

Gift of Dr. Gene Spector 37:1981

Walter Gramatté,
born 1897, Berlin, Germany
died 1929, Hamburg, Germany

Myself with a Window Frame Cross (Selbst mit Fensterkreuz), 1926
watercolor with graphite

What is an artist? . . . After all, I paint for myself and rejoice with the few who enjoy it, and it is a joy that is much purer, much more open and beautiful than if the whole world were to cheer along. Art is and remains for the artist, I don’t just mean the working artist, you can also be an artist in your outlook.
— Walter Gramatté, 1916

Gift of The Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation, Winnipeg, Canada 132:2019

Ilse Bing,
born 1899, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
died 1998, New York, New York

Self-Portrait, Paris, 1931
gelatin silver print

What interests me fundamentally is the ‘apparition’ of people and things. By ‘apparition’ I mean that they are here but at the same time elusive, part of the unreal. They can in the next second be gone like a dream. And yet at the same time they are still here, so incredibly real.
— Ilse Bing July 17, 1949

Funds given by Dr. and Mrs. Louis Fernandez, Dr. and Mrs. G. R. Hansen, and donors to the 1997 Art Enrichment Fund 14:1998

Käthe Kollwitz,
born 1867, Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
died 1945, Moritzburg, Germany

left: plate 1, The Plowmen (Die Pflüger), 1906
etching

right: plate 3, Whetting the Scythe (Beim Dengeln), 1905, printed 1908
etching, drypoint, aquatint, and soft-ground etching

from the cycle Peasants’ War (Bauernkrieg)

printed by O. Felsing, Kupferdruckerei, Berlin

Käthe Kollwitz was a passionate supporter of workers’ rights. She believed that their exploitation echoed the plight of medieval peasants, who rose up in the bloody Peasants’ War of 1524. Her suffering figures generated sympathy for the cause and reminded viewers of the historical cost of oppression.

At the bottom of all these classes was the exploited bulk of the nation, the peasants. It was the peasant who supported the other strata of society: princes, officials, nobles, clergymen, patricians and burghers. No matter whose subject the peasant was . . . he was treated by all as a thing, a beast of burden, and worse.
—Friederich Engels, The Peasants War in Germany, 1850

(left) Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Dagen, 1980. WU 1980.8 2022.104; (right) Museum Purchase 18:1941

Käthe Kollwitz,
born 1867, Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
died 1945, Moritzburg, Germany

Unemployed (Erwerbslos), 1925
woodcut

I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill. Work is supposed to relieve you . . . Did I feel relieved when I made the prints on war and knew the war would go on raging? Certainly not.
—Käthe Kollwitz, January 4, 1920

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Gift of the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1936. WU 1449 2022.105

Käthe Kollwitz,
born 1867, Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
died 1945, Moritzburg, Germany

Unemployment (Arbeitslosigkeit), 1909, printed 1921
etching, drypoint, aquatint, and burnished soft-ground etching

printed by O. Felsing, Kupferdruckerei, Berlin published by Verlag Emil Richter, Dresden

This is the typical misfortune of workers’ families. As soon as the man drinks or is sick and unemployed, it is always the same story. Either he hangs on his family like a dead weight and lets them feed him . . . or he becomes melancholy, or he goes mad, or he takes his own life. For the woman the misery is always the same. She keeps the children whom she must feed, scolds and complains about her husband. She sees only what has become of him and not how he became that way.
—Käthe Kollwitz, September 1909

Gift of Fred A. Couts 53:2005

Day & Dream in Modern Germany, 1914-1945

Paul Klee, born 1879, Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland
died 1940, Muralto, Switzerland

The Witch with a Comb (Die Hexe mit dem Kamm), from the portfolio Artists’ Donation to the German Book Museum (Künstlerspende für das deutsche Buchmuseum), 1922 lithograph

printed by Staatliches Bauhaus, Weimar published by Deutsches Buchmuseum, Leipzig

Museum Purchase 438:1943

Georg Büchner. Lenz. ein Fragment. 1839. Reprinted with etchings by Walter Gramatté. Hamburg: Werkstatt Lerchenfeld, 1925.

The novella Lenz is a fictionalized account of the life of Jakob Lenz (1751–1792), a poet who suffered from mental illness. His tragic biography appealed to author Georg Büchner (1813–1837), who based his story on the diaries of Lenz’s caretaker and on the poet’s own writings. This 1925 luxury edition of Lenz was illustrated by Walter Gramatté. A selection of his Lenz etchings are presented at right. A modern English edition of Lenz is available in the gallery for viewing.

Gift of The Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation, Winnipeg, Canada 128:2019

Walter Gramatté,
born 1897, Berlin, Germany
died 1929, Hamburg, Germany

from the series Büchner’s Lenz (zu Büchners Lenz), 1924
etchings with aquatint

As [Lenz’s] surroundings grew darker in shadow, everything seemed dreamlike to him, repugnant; anxiety took hold of him like a child who must sleep in the dark; he felt as if he were blind. And now it grew, this mountain of madness shot up at his feet; the hopeless thought that everything was a dream spread itself out in front of him.
—Georg Büchner, Lenz, 1839

A modern English edition of Lenz is available in the gallery for viewing.

Gifts of The Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation, Winnipeg, Canada 244-247:2019, 250-251:2019

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
born 1880, Aschaffenburg, Germany
died 1938, Frauenkirch, Switzerland

Man and Woman by the Sea (Mann und Mädchen am Meer), 1908, printed 1916
soft-ground etching in brown

printed by O. Felsing, Kupferdruckerei, Berlin

A woman in a white dress daydreams on a beach in Fehmarn, an island off the northeastern coast of Germany. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner spent the summer of 1908 on Fehmarn with the photographer Emy Frisch (1884–1975) and her brother Hans (1885–1945), the models for this print. Its irregular flecks, scribbled lines, and textural washes give the scene an otherworldly look that captures the reverie of a day by the sea.

The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund 74:1965

Otto Mueller,
born 1874, Liebau, Germany (now Lubawka, Poland)
died 1930, Obernigk, Germany (now Oborniki Śląskie, Poland)

Nude Before a Tent (Akt vor Zelt), around 1922
pastel, watercolor, and crayon

Bathers in water, swimming and splashing and wading, bathers at the beach, nude bodies among reeds and tree leaves, a pair of lovers, a female nude, these are for [Otto] Mueller inexhaustible subjects, from which he always knows how to produce another composition . . . It appears as if Mueller, given a subject which really appeals to him, could go on for ever and ever.
—Paul Westheim, “Otto Mueller,” 1921

Gift of Morton D. May 362:1955

Renée Sintenis,
born 1888, Glatz, Germany (now Kłodzko, Poland)
died 1965, Berlin, Germany

from the series Young Horses (Junge Pferde), 1940
drypoints

printed by O. Felsing, Kupferdruckerei, Berlin
published by Dr. Ernst Hauswedell & Co., Hamburg, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin

I have spent my whole life with animals. There is about me a complete inability to get along with people, to live with them. Animals were for me an absolute refuge from all of life’s demands that I didn’t feel up to because they were like a piece of a foreign organism in my body. Animals didn’t demand anything from me, they wanted nothing, with them I was allowed to be myself.
— Renée Sintenis, 1931

Museum Purchase 33:1947, 34:1947, 38:1947, 40:1947

Franz Marc,
born 1880, Munich, Germany
died 1916, Verdun-sur-Garonne, France

Animal Composition II (Tierkomposition II), 1913
watercolor

For artists, is there a more mysterious notion than that of how the landscape appears through the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world? Or an eagle, a deer, or a dog? How miserably soulless is our convention of placing animals in the landscape as we perceive it, rather than seeking to penetrate the soul of the animal so as to glean something of its own world of images.
— Franz Marc, about 1911–12

Gift of Morton D. May 374:1955

Heinrich Campendonk,
born 1889, Krefeld, Germany
died 1957, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Half-Length Male Figure with Cow and Goat (Männliche Halbfigur mit Kuh und Ziege), 1916 woodcut

The people [Heinrich Campendonk] paints appear to come from another star. There is nothing real about them. They don’t stride, they don’t walk, they don’t sit . . . Their bodies have no density, they appear to be assembled from colored crystals and you can almost see the sparkle of their colorful glass souls inside. His animals come from the land of fairytales, and the plants have their home in the poet’s soul of the artist who made them.
—Walter Schürmeyer, “Heinrich Campendonk,” 1918

Museum Shop Fund 59:1984

Otto Mueller,
born 1874, Liebau, Germany (now Lubawka, Poland)
died 1930, Obernigk, Germany (now Oborniki Śląskie, Poland)

Seated Nude (Sitzender Akt), around 1926
watercolor, pastel, and crayon

The main goal of my endeavors is to express my feelings for the landscape and people with the greatest possible simplicity; exemplary to me, also for pure artisanship, was and still is the art of the ancient Egyptians.
— Otto Mueller, 1919

It is hard to reconcile Otto Mueller’s admiration for ancient Egyptian art with his depictions of nude women in nature. He may have been inspired by the elegance of recently excavated artifacts or by the sense of timelessness that many Europeans of his generation associated with ancient Egypt.

Gift of Morton D. May 361:1955

Hans Bellmer,
born 1902, Kattowitz, Germany (now Katowice, Poland)
died 1975, Paris, France

The Doll (La Poupée), 1935, printed later
gelatin silver print

Hans Bellmer’s photograph of a doll inspired his friend, the French poet Paul Éluard (1895–1952), to compose this poem.

In t he house with the loose boards, with the leaking roof, in the stairway with steps carpeted by old shoes, she is thick, opaque, and raw. In a word, she is alone. Alone in her muddy surroundings and cold, alone and without her eyes, impossibly alone. It’s elsewhere that fresh air falls straight down on the appearances of ordinary life.
—Paul Éluard, “The Games of the Doll,” 1938

Museum Shop Fund 159:1987

Walter Peterhans,
born 1897, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
died 1960, Kernen im Remstal, Germany

left: Good Friday Enchantment (Karfreitagszauber), 1929, printed 1977

right: Dead Hare (Toter Hase), 1929, printed 1977
gelatin silver prints

published by Sander Gallery, Washington D.C. and New York

German-born photographer Ellen Auerbach (1906–2004) studied with Walter Peterhans and left a firsthand account of his meticulous working process.

I will never forget his preparation of a still life consisting of six small objects. With the help of two 500-watt bulbs and with admirable perseverance and delicacy, he worked on it for hours. With tweezers he shifted a loose thread a millimeter or two. Moving the lamps, he made me realize the importance of light for the expressive creation of a photograph—the romantic backlighting, the flat cold light in the foreground. When the wool finally looked fluffiest and the silk looked silkiest, he was ready to expose the negative.
—Ellen Auerbach

Gifts of Sander Gallery, Inc. 161:1995 (left), 159:1995 (right)

Max Beckmann,
born 1884, Leipzig, Germany
died 1950, New York, New York

Day and Dream, 1946
portfolio of 15 lithographs

published by Curt Valentin, New York

What I want to show in my work is the idea that hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking the bridge that leads from the visible to the invisible.
—Max Beckmann, “On My Painting,” 1938

In Day and Dream, scenes from Max Beckmann’s exile in Amsterdam combine with dream imagery to create a fantasy world. It dates from an eventful time in his life. World War II (1938–1945) had ended, and Beckmann was looking for a new home. A New York art dealer’s commission for Day and Dream was an opportunity to make connections in the United States. The next year, Beckmann moved to St. Louis to teach
at Washington University.

Plates

1. Self Portrait
2. Weather-vane
3. Sleeping Athlete
4. Tango
5. Crawling Woman
6. I don’t want to eat my Soup
7. Dancing Couple
8. King and Demagogue
9. The Buck
10. Dream of War
11. Morning
12. Circus
13. Magic Mirror
14. The Fall of Man
15. Christ and Pilate