International Modernism: Art in a Fast-changing World

In his graphite drawing Wall Street, Arnold Ronnebeck’s captures the dramatic visual effect of a skyscraper-lined streetscape in the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan. From deep shadows to brilliant light, the scene emphasizes the unrelenting geometry of modern urban architecture.  In the far distance is the spire of the historic Trinity Church, a Gothic-revival Episcopal parish church completed in 1846.

Wall Street, New York

48th Street, Looking Northwest from a Point Between Second and Third Avenues, Manhattan

Editioned artist multiple, Series D (1961); 'Duchamp's miniature museum' containing replicas of objects and printed reproductions of works in all media by the artist; three sliding panels, one wood stand; four three-dimensional objects; portfolio of folders (27 pages) inside inner compartment; outside light green linen, lining light green Ingres paper; box contains 68 items. No outer leather case (valise), as published.

Box in a Valise is essentially a miniature portable museum of the work of Marcel Duchamp. It consists of sixty-eight separate photographic reproductions and three-dimensional replicas of the artist’s most important works. Based on an idea Duchamp developed in 1936, the first boxes were assembled by Duchamp in 1941 and smuggled out of France during the Nazi occupation of that country. In an era of mass emigration and political terror, the idea of packing up all of one’s artworks in a suitcase would have seemed particularly practical. 

Similar to a museum installation, each work has a label identifying its title, medium, date, and, in many cases, its owner. Here, Duchamp reflects on the very nature of art, self-consciously raising questions about authenticity, authorship, the aura of the unique object, and the authority of the museum as arbiter of taste and knowledge. Assembled in 1961, this copy of Box in a Valise is one of three hundred produced by Duchamp or his relatives between 1941 and 1971.

Boîte-en-Valise (Box in a Valise) / De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy)

Train engine, left half of image; five slanted vertical white lines on blue ground, right third of image

While new transportation technology caused a great deal of change and upheaval, it was also celebrated as an exciting achievement. Cassandre portrays the modernism of the train with clean and simple shapes and emphasizes its power by having us look up at its towering iron form from a track-level perspective. He also emphasizes the speed of the railway with straight lines that disappear rapidly into the distance. 

Cassandre's celebratory poster may have helped the public to see train trips as an enjoyable part of a journey rather than just a means of transport. Immediately upon boarding, passengers could escape the routine of ordinary life and enjoy the possibilities afforded by industrialization.

Nord Express

Street-level view of Woolworth building, New York City

I see great forces at work; great movements....pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards.
                                                                                                                                           —John Marin

John Marin imparts the vitality of the modern city in this now iconic image of New York’s Woolworth Building. Designed by renowned American architect Cass Gilbert, the 60-story skyscraper was at the time of its completion in 1913 the tallest building in the world and widely celebrated as a symbol of modernity. Marin visually conveys the structure’s intrinsic energy, the building appearing to sway to an invisible rhythm. He explored the subject multiple times in oil, watercolor, and etching, and exhibited a watercolor version in the landmark 1913 Armory Show introducing European-inspired modern art to the American public.

Woolworth Building (The Dance)

The Way Home is the opening scene in Beckmann's acclaimed graphic cycle Die Holle (Hell), a dark and disturbing essay on the collapse of German society in the aftermath of the First World War (1914-18). Set in postwar Berlin, the allegorical scene features Beckmann as a man on his way home who suddenly encounters a horribly disfigured veteran under the light of a street lamp. Bearing the scars of war, the once proud soldier symbolizes the fate of Germany itself, broken and defeated. In the foreground, a menacing black dog warns of the dangers that lie ahead. Beckmann further enhances the tension of the scene by crowding his figures into a shallow pictorial space. Above all, The Way Home is a powerful denouncement of war.

The Way Home (Der Nachhausweg), plate from "Die Holle" (Hell)

Conrad Felixmüller came to prominence in Germany in the late 1910s when the emotional intensity of Expressionism began to give way to a more objective vision of modern life. The Acrobat depicts a female trapeze artist who poses for the artist while a clown steals her spot on the trapeze and swings over her head, much to the delight of the crowd behind them. Felixmüller seemed drawn to the circus, a separate realm where the bizarre and unusual were commonplace. Indeed, this topsy-turvy world seemed an apt metaphor for the chaotic conditions that wracked German society in the wake of World War I.

The Acrobat

The Dream and Lie of Franco is one of Picasso's most intense and committed political statements. He conceived of the project in January 1937 in response to the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected Spanish Republican government by General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist rebels, whose actions sparked the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

The portfolio consists of two plates together with a prose poem. Each of the plates features nine vignettes, forming an 18-scene narrative. Picasso worked on the intaglio plates from left to right, but because the images are reversed during printing, they are read from right to left. He adopted a comic strip format and cartoon-like figures to ridicule Franco's cruel exploits in Spain. In one frame, the grotesque general mistakenly kills and devours his own horse. In another, he prays on the altar of money. While in others, he engages in combat with an angry bull, symbolizing Spain. 

Three of the last four scenes were completed after German and Italian forces allied with Franco destroyed the Basque town of Guernica in an aerial bombing raid on April 26, 1937. The scenes relate to studies for Picasso's famous anti-war mural Guernica, which immortalized this atrocity. Through his powerful imagery and innovative use of narrative, Picasso transforms the centuries-old tale of the Spanish horseman Don Quixote into a particularly modern and senseless tale.
Issued in an edition of 1,000, the portfolio was intended to reach a large audience, with the proceeds from sales going to fund the Spanish Republicans. It was available for purchase during the debut exhibition of Guernica at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Dream and Lie of Franco, Plate 1

The Dream and Lie of Franco is one of Picasso's most intense and committed political statements. He conceived of the project in January 1937 in response to the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected Spanish Republican government by General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist rebels, whose actions sparked the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

The portfolio consists of two plates together with a prose poem. Each of the plates features nine vignettes, forming an 18-scene narrative. Picasso worked on the intaglio plates from left to right, but because the images are reversed during printing, they are read from right to left. He adopted a comic strip format and cartoon-like figures to ridicule Franco's cruel exploits in Spain. In one frame, the grotesque general mistakenly kills and devours his own horse. In another, he prays on the altar of money. While in others, he engages in combat with an angry bull, symbolizing Spain. 

Three of the last four scenes were completed after German and Italian forces allied with Franco destroyed the Basque town of Guernica in an aerial bombing raid on April 26, 1937. The scenes relate to studies for Picasso's famous anti-war mural Guernica, which immortalized this atrocity. Through his powerful imagery and innovative use of narrative, Picasso transforms the centuries-old tale of the Spanish horseman Don Quixote into a particularly modern and senseless tale.

Issued in an edition of 1,000, the portfolio was intended to reach a large audience, with the proceeds from sales going to fund the Spanish Republicans. It was available for purchase during the debut exhibition of Guernica at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Dream and Lie of Franco, Plate 2

Picasso published The Dream and Lie of Franco with a surrealistic poem in which he detailed the cruelty and barbarism of Fascist leader General Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war. A reproduction of Picasso's hand-written text in Spanish was accompanied by translations in both French and English.

Text page from Sueño y Mentira de Franco (The Dream and Lie of Franco)

As one of the leaders of the 1930s English linocut movement, Sybil Andrews first demonstrated an interest in block printing in 1922. By the end of the 1930s, she had created forty-three color linocuts, including this famous print. Produced in an edition of sixty, Speedway marks the pinnacle of Andrews's achievement as a modernist printmaker and shows her keen understanding of the color linocut process. Hand-printed on thin Japan paper from four blocks of incised linoleum (one for each color), her dramatic print captures both the dynamism of the speedway and the thrill of motorcycle racing in its rhythmic, simple shapes.

Speedway

binding: printed paper covers in black and red on orange paper; 74 pp.

In 1923, El Lissitzky provided illustrations and typeface designs for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s For the Voice—a selection of thirteen of his most frequently quoted poems ranging thematically from leftist political agitation to witty observations on urban life. Mayakovsky intended the poems in this volume to be read aloud. Lissitzky described his design of the book: “To make it easier for the reader to find any particular poem, I use an alphabetical (thumb-indexed) index. The book is created with the resources of the compositor’s type case alone. The possibilities of two-color printing (with overlapping and cross-hatching) have been fully exploited: my pages stand in much the same relation to the poems as an accompanying piano to a violin.” 

Here, the artist achieved all of his typographical goals: produced mechanically, according to a functionalist rationale, the book’s design, layout, and illustration all unite to reinforce the emotional and intellectual power of Mayakovsky’s texts.

Dlya Golosa

Lozowick's precisionist image of a chemical refinery is one of twelve lithographs he produced for a calendar honoring American industrial prowess during World War II. Active in leftist politics, Lozowick was closely allied with Russian Constructivism during the 1920s, championing the machine aesthetic that became an important aspect of the American Precisionists. Like the present example, his paintings and graphic work regularly explored the industrial landscape, stressing the power and mystique of the modern machine.

Gas Synthetics

Inspired by what the artist called “crystallizations of memories of the circus, folktales, and voyages,” Jazz brilliantly realizes Henri Matisse’s intuitive approach to art. He regarded his designs as chromatic and rhythmic improvisations, the visual equivalent of jazz music. Matisse began working on the project in 1943 while convalescing from a serious illness. Since painting was too physically demanding, he turned his attention to collaged paper cutouts, a technique he invented in the 1930s as a way of developing ideas for his paintings and decorative commissions. He made his compositions by arranging shapes, forms, and figures cut from sheets of paper colored with vivid gouache pigments. The twenty compositions were translated into metal stencils that guided the hand painting of the edition.

Jazz

Georg Mayer-Marton served in as an artillery officer for the Austrian Army during the final two years of World War I (1914-18). His drawing of refugees on the move is a potent reminder of the consequences of armed conflict.

The War

Following his studies at the Minneapolis School of Art (now Minneapolis College of Art and Design), Minnesota native Clement Haupers studied in Paris at the Grande Chaumiére and at Académie Colarossi, two schools that catered to visiting American artists. While there, he frequented the raucous and risqué Parisian nightclubs, making lively, spontaneous drawings of the female dancers and other performers. Their partial nudity and the artist’s on-the-spot execution bring to mind similar depictions of nightlife and performers by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1890s.

Night Club Dancers, Paris

While living in New York City in the mid-1910s, Abraham Walkowitz began a series of experimental abstractions he called New York Improvisations. Many of these drawings presented aspects of the city in an angular style inspired by the Cubist works of Picasso and Braque. Others, like this drawing, featured organic patterns of billowing, curvilinear forms. “Art has its own life,” he once stated. “One receives impressions from contacts or objects and then new forms are born in equivalents of line or color improvisations . . . the artist creates a new form of life.” This drawing represents an emotional response to the rhythm and energy of the urban experience itself.

Abstraction

My City

Vienna Secession

Advertisement for the forthcoming landing of the Graf-Spee dirigible at Waalhaven.

Graf-Spee Landing

Dymaxion Car

Russian artists responded to the outbreak of war in Central Europe in 1914 in paintings and works on paper. In her portfolio "Mystical Images of War," Natalia Goncharova depicts all aspects of armed conflict past and present, ranging from the archangel Michael riding triumphantly through flames on horseback to celestial beings observing fighter planes in combat. She realizes her apocalyptic vision of war in this powerful portfolio of masterful lithographs formally inspired by the solemn gravity of traditional Russian icons and the dynamism of contemporary Futurist painting. She successfully draws upon these diverse stylistic influences to express the horror of armed conflict.

Saint George the Victorius

Pennsylvania Station subway platform at rush hour

Penn. Station

Returning to the Trenches

Kerr Eby served with the American army in France during the First World War (1914-18). His experiences on the frontlines convinced him of the absurdity of war and violence. In the years after the war's end, Eby produced a series of prints based largely on sketches he made during his military service. Some were documentary, others far darker in tone. 

In 1935, fearing the imminent threat of a second European war, Eby wrote an emotional anti-war essay that appeared in a gallery catalogue for an exhibition of his war prints.  In the last print of the series, issued in 1937, Eby portrays Mars, the Roman god of war, as a murderous and insatiable monster who devours soldiers and entire armies. The etching takes its title from a book of the same name by British writer Henry Major Tomlinson, a prominent anti-war advocate, and reflects Eby's grave concerns about the rising specter of war.

Mars His Idiot

Sailor's Holiday

Along with many other Americans, George Bellows was outraged by published reports of German brutality toward civilian populations in occupied Belgium during the First World War (1914-18). Chief among these accounts was the Bryce Report, a British government sponsored effort to turn public and political opinion against Germany. The report's credible, but lurid eyewitness accounts of atrocities stirred anger and indignation that ultimately contributed to America's entry into the war in 1917. 

In 1918, Bellows created a series of provocative lithographs detailing German war crimes described in Bryce's report. The prints reflect Bellow's changing attitude toward the war. Though fervently anti-war at the start of hostilities, Bellows openly supported the American war effort by the time he began his lithographic series and even enlisted to fight in the tank corps, but never served. The Barricade, No. 2 recounts one of the more gruesome episodes of degradation and violence instigated by German troops who used Belgian civilians as human barricades to suppress civil resistance.

The Barricade No. 2

Circus

Seated Harlequin

Wounded Soldier

book by Hans Christian Andersen; designed and illustrated in color with a decorated wrapper by van der Leck; bookplate on title page

Designed entirely by Bart van der Leck, Het Vlas is the only fully illustrated book of the De Stijl movement and one of the most sophisticated children’s books of the modern era. Visually austere, the book is limited to rectilinear forms presented in primary colors and black and white. The illustrations accompany a fairy tale by Danish novelist and children’s book author Hans Christian Andersen, which follows the life of the flax plant from flowering, harvest, and processing into linen.

Het Vlas

Rockwell Kent's wood engraving was produced as the cover illustration for a 1937 issue of the New Masses, a prominent American leftwing publication. Kent was active in socialist causes and politics throughout his lifetime and regularly championed workers' rights and their role in society, primarily through his graphic art. Among Kent's most overtly proletarian illustrations, the engraving features a young, muscular man confronting his unseen adversaries, swinging his shovel against their raised bayonets, as fires of revolution roar in the background. Emblematic of the workers struggle against the excesses of capitalism, the image suggests solidarity with the working class, while also emphasizing the individual's role in fighting oppression.

Workers of the World, Unite!

Emerging from Spanish tradition, the bullfight is a central and symbolic theme in Picasso’s work. Since the 19th century, there have been women with legendary careers as bullfighters. Picasso’s female bullfighter appeared in his work only between 1933 and 1935, with each representation bearing the face of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. Among Picasso’s largest prints, La Grande corrida presents the passion, violence, and drama of the bullfight as a metaphor for his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Olga, and his desire for Marie-Thérèse. First printed in 1939, the etching was never formally published, but fifty unsigned impressions are known. Mia’s impression is one of only three printed on vellum (calfskin).

La Grande corrida, avec femme torero

Though nearly impossible to decipher, Jacques Villon’s composition portrays a circus equilibrist (acrobat) performing a handstand. The nearly abstract image bears the strong influence of the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, in which forms are fragmented and reassembled in multiple, shifting points of view. Here, Villon creates a complex pattern of alternating dark and light planes that simultaneously describes the subject while heightening the ambiguity of the depicted space. A sense of motion is implied by the flickering arrangement of darks and lights.

Le Petit Equilibriste

In this image of maternal protection, Kollwitz portrays a group of mothers banding together to guard their children from exterior threats while preventing them from leaving the safety of the circle. In 1918 Kollwitz responded to the poet Richard Dehmel's appeal to all capable Germans to sacrifice themselves to the death for the Fatherland. She believed that enough people had already fallen and quoted the poet Goethe who wrote, "Seed corn must not be ground." The inclusion of a print like this in the War series displays Kollwitz's unique outlook on this theme.

The Mothers

Käthe Kollwitz is remembered for her haunting scenes of suffering, especially the tragic consequences of poverty and disease among women and children. She was anti-war, anti-violence, and ultimately a believer in the triumph of the human spirit, and she skillfully used the graphic arts—prints, illustrations, posters—to promote her left-leaning social agenda. In her print cycle Krieg (War), Kollwitz exploited the woodcut’s stark graphic power to illustrate war’s tragic effect on wives, parents, and children left behind. Tied to no specific time or place, the heartrending images are both universal admonishments against war and personal memories of loss—her son Peter died in battle in 1914, two months after joining the German Army.

The Widow II

Infantry, Chateau-Thierry

The City

International Workers Order (IWO)

In 1958, Picasso moved with Jacqueline Roque (who would become his second wife in 1961) to the Château de Vauvenargues in the South of France. There they were close to the village of Vallauris, which had recently begun to permit bullfighting. Picasso and Roque were passionate about the bullfight, and he now returned to this subject, which had fascinated him earlier in his career. 

Après la Pique depicts the moment when the picador (on the blindfolded horse) has thrust his sharpened lance into the bull’s neck to weaken its shoulder muscles. For this dynamic image of power and struggle, Picasso chose the relief printmaking technique of linoleum cut, using this simple medium to explore form and contrast in expressive ways.

Après la Pique

Wall Street

Bendix Products

Hudson River Bridge (George Washington Bridge)

Christ-loving Warriors

Angels and Airplanes

A Common Grave

54 numbered pages and 52 illustrations by Goncharova, of which 9 are full-page; title printed in black; binding: glued wove paper wrappers. Lithographic reproduction of the author's handwritten Cyrillic text.

Natalia Goncharova permanently settled in Paris in 1917 along with her companion, the Russian avant-garde painter Mikhail Larionov. Her evocative illustrations for “The City” reflect her artistic evolution from Neo-Primitivism and Futurism to a theatrical lyricism, derived from her work as a stage designer for the renowned Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev.
     Aleksandr Rubakin’s romanticized poems about Paris chronicle the city as it evolves into a modern urban center. Together, the poems and illustrations present a vision of a dynamic, vital metropolis—exciting, full of movement, and encompassing the human and emotional elements of modern city life.

Gorod: Stikhi (The City: Verses)

Conceived in 1920 while El Lissitzky taught experimental typography at UNOVIS (Champions of the New Art), an influential Russian art school, this Suprematist book was first issued as an edition in Germany in 1922. Lissitzky intended the work as an educational tale to be read by children. 

The artist explains: “I have set out to formulate an elementary idea, using elementary means, so that children may find it a stimulus to active play and grown-ups enjoy it as something to look at.” 

The pictograms illustrate the struggle of the red square to rebuild a new social city in defiance of a threatening black square. The red square, symbol of life and the new revolutionary order with unlimited possibilities, operates against the black square, which signifies the old order, chaos, egotism, and death. It represents a story of societal clashes—a clear reference to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the triumph of the Bolsheviks, the revolutionary working class of Russia.

About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale in Six Constructions

construction site in a large reinforced pit with workers throughout; busy street scene at top of image with cars and people in city

In this intriguing bird’s-eye view, Muirhead Bone presents a meticulously detailed construction site in Midtown Manhattan. With great observational precision, he depicts workers building the Roosevelt Hotel at 45th Street and Madison Avenue, one of the many massive construction projects underway during the economic boom of the 1920s. Using the engraving technique of drypoint, Bone contrasts the immense size and dramatic complexity of the excavation pit with the tiny figures of the workers. He spent five years completing this print, which went through 19 states (versions) before it was finally issued as an edition.

Manhattan Excavation

horrified man with eyes and mouth open wide, clutching his PL shoulder; large bleeding wound in PL arm

Published in Berlin in 1924 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the mobilization of German forces during the First World War (1914-18), Otto Dix's celebrated print cycle Der Krieg presents the ugly realities of modern warfare in horrific detail. The portfolio features 50 intaglio plates, whose subjects arose from Dix's own wartime experiences and memories of the ravages of combat and its aftermath. Dix had enthusiastically volunteered for service in the German army in 1915 and had fought in an artillery regiment and as a machine gunner on the Western front, including the infamous Battle of the Somme, where Allied and German forces suffered more than one million causalities. Wounded several times himself, Dix was deeply traumatized by his experiences and suffered recurring nightmares for the rest of his life.  At the same time, Dix was fascinated by the experience of war, especially the psychological truths of human conflict. He explores these truths through the morbid realism of his depictions.

Dix consciously modeled Der Krieg on Francisco Goya's equally famous print cycle Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), which recounted the travesties of Napoleon's invasion of Spain during the Peninsular War of 1808 to 1814. Like Goya, Dix produced his images in intaglio, a medium perfectly suited for the lush textures and meticulous detail he sought to create. As a result, despite their horrific content, the prints possess an aesthetic quality that Dix exploited through his skillful use of etching, drypoint and aquatint techniques.

Dix, who in the years following the First World War became one of the preeminent proponents of the social realist movement Neue Sachlicgkeit (New Objectivity), was relentless in exposing life's absurdities and contradictions. One of the great masterpieces of twentieth century art, Der Krieg is a fundamental examination of humanity's capacity for brutality, and remains one of the most powerful anti-war statements ever made.

Verwundeter (Herbst 1916, Bapaume) (Wounded Man [Spring 1916, Bapaume]), plate 6 from Der Krieg (The War)

Stormtruppe geht unter Gas vor (Storm Troopers Advance under a Gas Attack), plate 12 from Der Krieg (War)

fence posts and barbed wire, impaled with bodies and body parts

Totentanz anno 17 (Höne Toter Mann) (Dance of Death, the year 17 [Dead Man's Hill]), plate 19 from Der Krieg (The War)

skull with tufts of hair and moustache; worms crawling through eye sockets, nostrils, mouth and hair

Schädel (Skull), plate 31 from Der Krieg (The War)

plane flying low over a narrow street, with tops of buildings crumbling; wide-eyed people fleeing in bottom corners, others lying in street

Lens wird mit Bomben belegt (Lens is Destroyed by Bombing), plate 33 from Der Krieg (The War)

small book with cardboard covers, with printed cover design applied; printed poems illustrated with twelve original black-and-white abstract woodcuts, including cover image

One of the first major books of the antiestablishment Dada movement (1915–23), Twenty-five Poems resulted from the collaboration of the German-French painter and sculptor Jean Arp and French avant-garde poet and essayist Tristin Tzara, the principal founders of Zurich Dada. An early proponent of pure abstraction, Arp exhibited his first abstract works in 1915. For this project, he created a series of ten abstract black-and-white woodcuts as visual complements to Tzara’s nihilist poems, which rejected the idea that life has meaning. In exploring abstraction, Arp attempted to free himself from “traditional forms of art,” adopting a universal organic morphology and exploring the idea of chance in art.

A highly influential author and performer, Tzara described the nihilist intent of his Dada poems in the following passage: “I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual.”

Vingt-cinq poèmes

bridge arching across center of print; New York skyline behind with reflection of city and bridge in lower half; border

Trained as both an architect and an artist, John Marin made his first etchings in 1905, while studying in Paris. Though his early efforts were mainly romantic views of European cities and landmarks, Marin increasingly came under the influence of Cezanne and the Parisian avant-garde during his time there. Upon returning to America in 1911, he was captivated by the vitality and rhythm of the fast-changing New York metropolis, especially its many new skyscrapers. He created his first views of the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan that year, returning to the subject with this etching in 1913—the same year that the International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) opened in lower Manhattan and introduced modernism to many Americans.

Brooklyn Bridge and Lower New York

man smoking cigarette holding bell in L hand; sign on L reads [circus Beckm]; number one embossed into lower center of window mat

In "Jahrmarkt" ("Annual Fair"), Max Beckmann imagines the world as a traveling carnival teeming with an eclectic cast of actors, dancers, and circus entertainers who perform in the theater of life. Beckmann casts himself as a carnival barker in the series’ opening plate, ringing a small bell to announce the show, and cajoling viewers to enter the Circus Beckmann, a curious realm of outsiders and misfits. Many of the protagonists are friends and acquaintances of the artist; he even includes his wife Minna in the series, who famously appears along with Beckmann balancing on a tightrope. As the scenes of the portfolio unfold, a pageant of players takes the stage: a tall man, a sharpshooter, a snake charmer, exotic dancers, musicians, and other circus entertainers perform in succession. In one plate from the series, Beckmann presents a carousal crowded with a diverse lot of humanity, an apt metaphor for the apparent aimlessness of life. The series was inspired in part by Beckmann’s visits to the Prater, a Viennese amusement park, where he observed the performers and visitors and sketched them from life. Justly celebrated for its incisive observations on the human condition, "Jahrmarkt" is a brilliant example of Beckmann’s mature graphic style and seminal publication of German Expressionism.

Der Ausrufer, from "Jahrmarkt"

woman sitting on chair with headband, back to viewer; man on her L applying stage make-up; number two embossed into lower center of window mat

Garderobe, from "Jahrmarkt"

Fire Away! Buy Extra Bonds

World War II poster. An arm with a swastika on its sleeve stabs a dagger through a book labeled "Holy Bible".

This is The Enemy

underside of bridge at top and URC; New York skyline; boats on water in foreground

Painted plein air (directly from nature), this watercolor features one of Reginal Marsh's favorite perspectives on the burgeoning Manhattan skyline, the view from the East River waterfront in the borough of Brooklyn. Despite his interest in the growing modern metropolis, Marsh rejected the formal innovations of modern art, instead embracing long-standing artistic tradtions anchored in the great masters of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque. Indeed, his subjects—mostly figurative scenes of New York's lower and working classes—align him with the Social Realists, a loosely-knit group of activist American artists who used their art as a tool for social and political change.

New York Skyline with Bridge

abstract image; printed in black; linear design with football shape at bottom and organic vertical shape at center; printed on thin tissue paper; mounted in front of piece of black paper which is affixted to white coated cardstock

Russian born artist Naum Gabo was a leading exponent of modernist sculpture. About 1950, Gabo was ill and felt unable to bear the physical strain of fabricating his sculptures. In discussing the matter with his Connecticut neighbor William Ivins, founding curator of the Department of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the two settled on printmaking as an outlet for Gabo’s undiminished creative energy. Gabo was, however, at a loss as to which printmaking technique might best suit his talent. Ivins, half jesting, suggested wood engraving, the outmoded technique that brings to mind 19th-century American weekly newspapers. Gabo took up the challenge and went on to completely reinvent the art of wood engraving. 

Gabo underscored the abstract nature of his prints—their weightlessness—by referring to them as one would to music, each one a numbered "Opus.” His alternate name for the present print was “lyrebird.” This exotic Australian species is known for its spectacular, elegant tail feathers.

Untitled (Opus Four: The Lyrebird)

row of buildings drawn in in linear perspective with an emphasis on the diagonal; square appears to float in UL corner

Street

Mia’s Collection Development Plan calls for improving our holdings of Cubist works. This is a vibrant and appealing Cubist portrait by an underappreciated artist. It exemplifies many of the innovations of the Cubist movement during the feverishly experimental years leading up to World War I that revolutionized the artistic scene in Paris. Felix del Marle followed Picasso’s lead in breaking down the subject—fracturing its form—in order to provide the viewer with multiple points of view simultaneously. Here we see the man’s face straight-on to the left and in profile at the right. Del Marle increases the vibrancy of the image by contrasting the dappled spots with hard-edge form and flat application of color, partially dissolving the distinction between background and foreground. While a stunning Cubist work, the obscurity of the artist works in our favor—the price is less than five percent of what a significant Picasso or Braque drawing of the period would cost. 

Cubist image; deconstructed face with round glasses; white collar; black necktie; balding head; short, thick horizontal black lines at top and on clothing in several areas; orange triangles on either side of face; light blue areas at left; pink areas in LLQ; some yellow vertical areas on shoulders; text in French on left of face; grey paper

This portrait was made during the feverishly experimental Cubist period that revolutionized the artistic scene in Paris in the years leading up to World War I. Felix Del Marle followed Picasso’s lead in breaking down the subject—fracturing its form—in order to provide the viewer with multiple points of view simultaneously.

Here we see the man’s face straight-on to the left and in profile at the right. Del Marle increases the vibrancy of the image by contrasting the dappled spots with hard-edge forms and flat application of color, partially dissolving the distinction between background and foreground.

The inscription at the upper left—“Essai de Prosodie Française vers P. Jea[n]-Dupr[é]"—leads us to a bit of a mystery. Essai de prosodie française (vers sans rime) appeared in print in 1904, when it was published by the Parisian firm T.J. Plange. This appears to be a widely available publication, but we have found nothing else by the author and no facts about his biography. Perhaps P. Jean-Dupré is a nom de plume. Perhaps this is not the name of Del Marle’s sitter; perhaps the sitter was interested in the publication. An intriguing lead in this mystery points to Max Jacob, a poet and critic who was deeply involved with the Cubist movement—and whose profile resembles the one seen in this portrait.

Study for the Portrait of P. Jean-Dupré

large backhoe with continuous track wheels in foreground; man with glasses and cap standing on platform at right on machine, with the numbers "5343" on side of machine to right of man; heavyset man with glasses and cap at left edge standing next to row of filled train cars on track behind backhoe; another long row of train cars above ; mountains at top, with some men working; rubble in foreground; rather random areas of white gouache scattered throughout drawing; received in dark brown frame, glazed with Plexi

Philip Evergood was a politically active artist committed to workers’ rights and the plight of humanity during his long career. This drawing, made by 1940, is a straightforward and carefully designed homage to construction workers excavating a site for building.

Men and Machines (Mesabi Mines)

By the early 1900s, people worldwide were transforming their habits, identities, and landscapes more dramatically than ever. Artists and designers, inspired by innovations such as radios, skyscrapers, and even the development of modern psychology, responded with cutting-edge representations of new and familiar subjects.
“International Modernism” explores how this response to modern life evolved through much of the 20th century, from the 1910s through the early 1960s. Installed in stages from fall 2015 through mid-2016, “International Modernism” centers on objects from the Kunin Collection as well as paintings, prints, photography, and design from Mia’s collection.

Wall Street, New York, c. 1925

Arnold Ronnebeck