Kurzweil Woodcut: Der Polster, The Cushion

Description Martha Kurzweil, his wife, seated on a couch.
Very fine impression on fine Japanese paper published in the magazine: "Jahresmappedes Geselschaft für Vervielfältingende Kunst in Wien"
Proof mounted on its original support in Japanese bis paper.
1903

Novotny-Adolph: 428

Woodcut in five colors, yellow, green, brown, blue, black. There are variations in the printing, our proof belongs to "group B" Blue dress, green couch, gray tint.

Max Kurzweil was the co-founder of the Vienna Secession in 1897. He co-edited and illustrated the monthly magazine Ver sacrum from January 1898. Relatively early, in the early 1890s, a decisive change occurred in Kurzweil's life and art, when he came into contact with French painting. He worked in Paris from 1892 to 1894 and made regular summer trips to Concarneau, where a colony of artists, including Signac and Andri, had settled. What particularly struck him at the time were the paintings of Vuillard and Bonnard, and the black and white graphics of Vallotton. It was also at this time that he met Martha Guyot, the daughter of a merchant and deputy mayor of Concarneau. The following summer, they became engaged and then married in 1895.
The most important of Kurzweil's rare prints is this coloured woodcut. In Kurzweil's work, this woodcut clearly embodies the personality of the artist and at the same time the essence of an artistic movement, even the essence of the face of a century. Much of what Art Nouveau expressed about the spirit of the time can be read in this sheet, the characteristic floral style found in the cushion as well as in the pattern of the sofa. But this "ornamental gaiety" is counterbalanced by the sobriety of the color of the dress and the position of his wife with her face hidden, buried, as if taking refuge in a melancholy that was eating away at the artist.

Subject width: 260.00
Subject height: 287.00
Sheet width: 307.00
Sheet height: 425.00