The German Print Portfolio 1890-1930: Serials for a Private Sphere

October 3–December 12, 1993

The German print was influential in the development of the aesthetic, social, and political events of the period 1890-1930. This exhibition provides the first systematic explication of an artform which, created essentially for private ownership rather than public display, generated a new art market among a broad-based audience.

A print portfolio consists of a set of images, generally one per unbound sheet, which artists conceive of as a thematic unit, meant to be viewed in a specific order. One of the serial print’s great appeals for the printmaker is its ability to communicate ideas that require a sequential reading, much like the experience of reading a book.

The exhibition presents these 10 sets of prints as thematic series rather than as individual masterpieces, thereby offering new insight into their construction and meaning. The exhibition includes works by Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Rafaello Busoni, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Max Klinger, Oskar Kokoschka, and Max Pechstein. A number of techniques are represented: aquatint, etching, engraving, drypoint, lithography, color lithography, offset transfer lithography, and woodcut. Exploiting a range of graphic possibilities, artists used the portfolio to communicate a wide range of ideas and beliefs, sometimes incorporating their personal experiences to comment on this period of changes in the values and beliefs in their private and public lives. 

Exhibition catalogue available

Curator: Robin Reisenfeld, Assistant Professor at Dickinson College and specialist in the revival of the woodcut in modern German art, with the assistance of Richard A. Born, Curator of the Galleries, and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Assistant Curator.

The exhibition was funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Study of Europe, the Smart Family Foundation, Joan and Robert Feitler, and Raymond Smart.

The exhibition tour included: The Detroit Institute of Arts; Tampa Museum of Art; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York; and Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.