Etch of Pyramus & Thisbe by Max Klinger, c1900

Frame: 20 3/4" x 14 3/4"
Etching: 14.5" x 9.5"

Max Klinger
(source: Wiki) Max Klinger (18 February 1857 - 5 July 1920) was a German artist who produced significant work in painting, sculpture, prints and graphics, as well as writing a treatise articulating his ideas on art and the role of graphic arts and printmaking in relation to painting. He is associated with symbolism, the Vienna Secession, and Jugendstil (Youth Style) the German manifestation of Art Nouveau. He is best known today for his many prints, particularly a series entitled Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove and his monumental sculptural installation in homage to Beethoven at the Vienna Secession in 1902.

A significant portion of Klingers reputation is associated with his many cycles and series of intaglio prints, which influenced numerous printmakers and artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Klinger would adeptly integrate several intaglio media like aquatint, drypoint, and etching in a single plate, producing remarkable formal and tonal qualities. The subjects range from esoteric symbolism to darker aspects of realism.

In Paris he started to draft his polemical text for Painting and Drawing, which was eventually published in 1891, and subsequently reissued a number of times. The manuscript was well circulated and well read, with a number of later artist and historians referencing it, including Giorgio de Chirico who called Klinger the modern artist par excellence. In it Klinger asserted the idea that prints and the graphic arts should have a new and significant role in the arts, distinct from painting, and were best suited for stylistic and conceptual experimentation. Also that the differences between naturalism (realism) and neo-idealism, as well as form and content, were reconcilable, and both were possible. Concepts of the Gesamtkunstwerk, an all-embracing art form, with unity among the arts (e.g. painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, music, etc.), were also discussed.

Klinger had a lifelong passion for music and musical elements are often reflected and expressed in his art. His print cycles were given opus numbers, typically associated with musical publications. His series Brahms Fantasies (1894) was intended to be an amalgamation of music, poetry, and the visual arts: to be viewed with a performance of the composers music, creating Gesamtkunstwerk or all-embracing art form. Klinger produced sculptures of Beethoven, Brahms, and Liszt as well.

Inspired by recent accounts of archaeological discoveries of antique sculptural remains made from various colored stones, Klinger utilized a variety of materials in many of his sculptures. A mixture of bronze, ivory, alabaster, and several different marbles were used in Beethoven. He studied and took measurements of Beethoven's death mask in Vienna and traveled to Laas in southwestern France to personally select the alabaster, and the Pyrenees and Syra (or Syros), Greece to select marbles. Elsa Asenijeff wrote of the unusually complex and difficult process involved with casting the large bronze throne from wax in her book Max Klinges Beethoven: Eine kunst-technische Studie (Max Klinges Beethoven: A Practical Artistic Study) published in 1902. The sculpture was exhibited in an earlier stage of development in Paris in 1885 and later rejected from major exhibitions in Berlin 1887 and 1888. It developed something of a cult-like reputation over the years.

Beethoven was the theme of the 14th exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1902, and Max Klingers sculpture was brought to Vienna as the centerpiece. The Vienna Secession had hoped to purchase the sculpture but this was not to come to fruition. Headed by Alfred Roller, the artist of the Secession created works on the theme for the galleries and Roller and the architect Josef Hoffmann oversaw the overall installation. Klinger's Beethoven was installed in the central hall with Alfred Roller's mural Night Descending on the wall behind it. Gustav Klimt's seminal Beethoven Frieze was visible in an adjoining room. Even the normally shy and retiring Gustav Mahler was persuaded to transcribed music from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for trumpets and rehearse the musicians for the opening. The exhibition, presented within the specific architecture, with the sculpture, paintings, and music was in part, offered in the context of the Gesamtkunstwerk, comparative to a contemporary installation. The exhibition received extensive press, and generated a scandal. Most of the hostile and negative reviews were directed at Gustav Klimt and his murals. However, Klinger's sculpture received its criticism as well, some dismissing it as kitsch, while others were offended by seeing Beethoven represented nude. Auguste Rodin attended the exhibition and was reported to have walked past Klinger's sculpture without comment, although at a later time he said it had nothing to do with sculpture.

Klinger was cited by many artists (notably Giorgio de Chirico) as being a major link between the symbolist movement of the 19th century and the start of the metaphysical movement. His work was also admired and a formative influence on later artist such as Max Ernst and other surrealist artist. The historian Holger Jacob-Friesen illustrates and discusses in detail the influence of Klinger's prints on artist such as Franz von Stuck, Kathe Kollwitz, Edvard Munch, Lovis Corinth, Otto Greiner, Alfred Kubin, Max Slevogt, Paul Klee, Richard Müller, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Horst Janssen, as well as De Chirico and Ernst.

Good condition overall.This is an original engraving from the late 19th century.From a collection kept in excellent condition and assembled in the 1940s by the artist Stella Drabkin, and her husband Dr David Drabkin, who were fascinated by the work of Max Klinger.Several examples of Klingers work were in storage in the Drabkin Estate for the last 75 years.All guaranteed to be original and from the late 19th century by the David Killen Gallery.