THE GREAT MASTERS OF PRINTMAKING

THE GREAT MASTERS OF PRINTMAKING

The ALBERTINA presents a retrospective of the history of printmaking over a period of six centuries, from Albrecht Dürer and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst. The two exhibitions planned as a pas de deux – at both ALBERTINA locations – span from works of the late Middle Ages to the prints of contemporary art. The two exhibitions are joined by a third, as it were, dedicated solely to the most important printmaker of the 20th century: Picasso.

The first exhibit, Dürer. Munch. Miró – The Great Masters of Printmaking will open at the Albertina (27 Gennaio 2023 – 14 Maggio 2023). It presents outstanding works of the so-called ‘Old Masters’ – including Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Bruegel, Rembrandt van Rijn – and leads up to the impressive works of modern and contemporary art. 

The second part of the exhibition, Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst. The Revolution of Printmaking will be at the Albertina Modern (24 Febbraio 2023 – 14 Maggio 2023). It presents 20th century artist that radically broke with the tradition of printmaking and found a new monumentality in the technique of silkscreen printing in the 1960s. 

Dürer. Munch. Miró

The exhibition begins with the most outstanding works by Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer at the ALBERTINA. This is continued with the engravings of Hendrick Goltzius and Pieter Bruegel’s only etching.

Modern art is introduced by the magnificent lithographs of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the Norwegian Edvard Munch’s revolutionary, symbolist-expressionist woodcut. Munch plays a central role in the modernization of the traditional woodcut and a major influence on the German expressionist prints by Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

The works of Marc Chagall and Joan Miró will close the exhibition. Important women artists will be represented by Kähte Kollwitz, the recently deceased Portuguese Paula Rego, and the Austrian artist Florentina Pakosta. This overview attests to the development of diverse printmaking techniques throughout 600 centuries.

Printmaking: from its Beginnings to the Present Day 

The invention of printing is one of the greatest artistic achievements of the late Middle Ages. The mass reproduction of images only became possible in Central Europe with the arrival of paper production in the late 14th century.

The development of the printing technology business unfolded as follows: Woodblock printing appeared in the early 15th century, copperplate engraving before the middle of the century, and etching shortly before 1500. Printmaking became an independent art genre that soon equaled painting. Compared to woodcut and copperplate engraving which required more work and material costs, etching offered greater scope for artistic experimentation and creative freedom. Due to the spontaneous ductus of its line image, it is closer to drawing than other printing techniques. Starting in the early 19th century, lithography then allowed large print editions without loss of print quality. From the 1960s onwards, a groundbreaking redefinition of printmaking emerged: the principle of serial work and the magnification of the medium were discovered by both female and male artists.

Throughout the centuries, artists have explored the various techniques of printing – initially with gouges and gravers, later with drypoint, then with etching processes, up to the complex chemical steps of lithography. This medium conquered all European countries – from Spain to the Netherlands, from Germany to Italy and via Norway to England. The variety of subjects used by artists is as diverse as the technique itself: Portraits, landscapes, sacred stories or socially critical images.

In the exhibition of ‘Great Masters of Printmaking’ masterpieces such as Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil, Munch’s The Kiss or Miró’s Abstract Composition are on display. Rembrandt’s work, the so-called Hundred Guilder Print will also be exhibited. This valuable work of art work cost a hundred Guilder and became famous under that name. Like no other collection in the world, the ALBERTINA is able to exhibit the history of the graphic arts with the most outstanding pieces taken from its own collection.

Curator Christof Metzger

Exhibition Texts
Dürer. Munch. Miró – The Great Masters of Printmaking

The development of printmaking techniques is one of the greatest artistic achievements of the late Middle Ages. With the advent of woodcut in the early 15th century, copper engraving before the middle of the century and, finally, etching shortly before 1500, printmaking had become a genre in its own right. Initially conceived only as a quick reproduction technique –for devotional images, objects in everyday use and such like – graphic art was gradually to become the equal of painting and in some cases, thanks to artists such as Albrecht Dürer, its superior. This also marked the transformation of art into a mass medium – finally, it had become possible for large numbers of people to obtain works of art.

It would not take long before woodcut and engraving reached their technical and aesthetic limits. However, etching offered fresh scope for artistic and technical experimentation, with its spontaneous line work bringing it closer to drawing than other printing processes. The technique reached its peak with Rembrandt.

In the early 19th century, etching and copper engraving were superseded by lithography, which made it possible to produce large print runs without the wear on the printing plates that led to a gradual loss of quality. The 20th century put a broad spectrum of techniques and means of expression in the hands of masters such as Edvard Munch and Joan Miró – and these approaches continue to challenge and inspire artists to this day.

Gouges and gravers: the origins of printmaking in the 15th century 

Mass reproduction of images only became possible with the proliferation of paper production in Central Europe in the late 14th century. The printing processes themselves were based on earlier artistic techniques. One such example, woodcut, was already in use for fabric and stamp printing. In this process, a raised printing form is carved out of the printing block, inked and printed. The oldest surviving woodcuts were created in the 1420s in southern Germany and Austria.

The first copper engravings appeared in the Upper Rhine region in the 1430s. With this technique, the lines to be printed are gouged into copper plates ready for inking. Applied at high pressure, the ink is transferred to the slightly moistened paper. The fundamental principles of the technique are the same as those used in silver and gold engraving, which explains why so many early engravers – including Albrecht Dürer – were goldsmiths by trade.

Involving more work than making woodcuts, copper engraving was also more expensive due to the higher cost of the material used. In addition, producing similarly large numbers of copies was not possible due to wear on the printing plate. However, engraving brought about a steady refinement of the prevailing graphic vocabulary. To a greater extent than with woodcut, the repertoire of motifs was expanded beyond religious themes to include secular depictions and ornamental patterns.

Martin Schongauer: when pictures found their feet 

When Martin Schongauer (c. 1450-1491) started his career in the 1470s, copper engraving was still a relatively young art rooted in the decorative techniques of the goldsmith’s trade. In fact, Schongauer was born in Colmar as the son of a goldsmith who had migrated from Augsburg, and he and his brothers were most likely introduced to the trade in their father’s workshop. Ultimately, it was painting that would be Schongauer’s main profession, which he practised in his Upper Rhine homeland until his death.

Besides his paintings, he produced 116 copper engravings, which, thanks to their technical and artistic perfection, are considered the most important graphic works before Albrecht Dürer, whose work he also significantly influenced. All of the sheets are initialled MS. This demonstrates Schongauer’s self-confidence as well as his business acumen: his copper engraving work became a branded product, and the artist is known to have gone to considerable lengths to distribute it commercially.

By the time that Schongauer was producing printed works at the latest, art had turned into a mass medium. For the first time in history, images had become a widely traded commodity. Thanks to printmaking, it was now possible to see what was being done elsewhere with the medium, which in turn facilitated a fruitful exchange between local tradition and farther-flung centres of artistic endeavour.

Albrecht Dürer: it doesn’t always have to be colour 

Albrecht Dürer, the son of a Hungarian-born goldsmith based in Nuremberg, was initially destined to take up an apprenticeship in his father’s workshop. His special talent for drawing became apparent at an early stage, and at the age of 15 Dürer was sent to Michael Wolgemut, the leading painter in Nuremberg at the time. After completing his apprenticeship, he followed the custom of the Wanderjahre — itinerant years during which he honed his artistic skills and that led him to the Upper Rhine (1490-1494). A second journey took him to Venice and northern Italy (c. 1494-1496), where he presumably hoped to receive further training at the painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna’s strictly organised company.

Dürer’s marriage in 1494 brought a commercial talent with a proven track record to his side in the shape of Agnes Frey, who would go on to boost sales of his art productions at fairs and markets throughout Europe. The fact that Dürer’s prints always circulated with the signet, which soon became a quality seal, speaks for the initial success of the fledgling company. His business model was a small, self-managed print shop for luxurious printed volumes, complete with its own highly efficient distribution network. By the time of his death, the workshop had produced over 100 engravings and etchings, no fewer than 260 woodcuts and a good 20 books illustrated with woodcuts.

Andrea Mantegna: early copper engraving in Italy 

In Italy, copper engraving took off in the 15th century – a few decades later than in northern Europe. Centred around Florence, early practitioners of the technique were craftsmen with a background in goldsmithing. However, leading artists were quick to recognise the potential of the new medium as a way to disseminate their ideas more widely. Seven prints are attributed to north Italian artist Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), the most important engraver of the 15th century. Though none are signed or dated, references to paintings and drawings by the artist offer various clues as to the chronological sequence. Mantegna also commissioned other masters to immortalise a number of his designs in copper engravings.

It is thought that he learned copper engraving during the time he spent in Florence in 1466. As is characteristic of many early Italian engravings, the human forms are strikingly contoured and set off against the dark ground to great effect by a narrow light stripe. He was inspired by contemporaries and, above all, by works from ancient times, which artists in northern Italy were aware of at that time. Mantegna, however, transformed antique blueprints into distinct creations all of his own that were admired by collectors and artists even during his lifetime. They had a major impact on later art and were disseminated in paintings, engravings, sculptures, plaques and majolicas.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: from life – and the spirit 

As printmaking increased in popularity, a dense network of publishing houses sprung up in the Netherlands. Upon acquiring originals from artists, publishers would have the images transposed onto copper plates by professional engravers. The key Antwerp-based publishing house run by Hieronymus Cock took receipt of various first-class originals by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which covered a wide range of themes. For the artist, the collaboration not only led to his work being popularised; it also provided him with a steady income, as distributing reproducible prints was far more lucrative than selling individual drawings.

The first images published by Cock show spectacular mountain panoramas based on models Bruegel created during and after his trip to Italy between 1552 and 1554. From the mid-1550s onwards, Bruegel closely followed the otherworldly imaginings of Hieronymus Bosch. His depictions of fantastic chimeric creatures and devils were known – and sought after – far beyond the country’s borders. Moralising images became another of Bruegel’s trademark products. In the proto-capitalist trading city of Antwerp, criticism of stupidity, excessive lust for money and immoderate egoism became the central theme. Like no other, Bruegel held up a mirror to his contemporaries as a means of censuring the inherent tragedy and greatness, ridiculousness and weakness of the human condition.

Hendrick Goltzius: the power of light and shadow 

After the early heyday of Dutch printmaking under Lucas van Leyden and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the late 16th century saw copper engraving flourish anew as part of the pan-European phenomenon of Mannerism. Haarlem-based engraver Hendrick Goltzius transposed designs by other artists, such as Bartholomäus Spranger, with the utmost technical virtuosity, while also transferring many of his own pictorial works to copper with outstanding skill. By refining this printmaking technique, he achieved a nuance in his engravings that was akin to painting, as evidenced both in his refined compositions and spectacularly moving character poses.

The art writer Karel van Mander, who was a friend of his, reported that Goltzius had been drawing from an early age despite the damage to his right hand sustained due to severe burns in a childhood accident. In 1574 Goltzius started to learn the craft of engraving from Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert and moved with his teacher from Kleve to Haarlem. At his workshop, the artist produced large-format sheets that were exceptional both technically and in terms of their content, experimenting with various techniques such as colour or chiaroscuro woodcut. The ancient gods and biblical heroes, which Goltzius transferred onto copper plates with characteristic mastery, still represent an absolute highlight of Dutch printmaking to this day as a particularly striking example of Mannerism.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: the Dutch Golden Age in black and white 

Rembrandt drew on the innovative potential of etching like no other Dutch master. Compared to copper engraving, this technique allowed for more fluid and finer modelling of the line work. In Rembrandt’s oeuvre, printmaking stands on an equal footing with his paintings. While the artist’s painted works focused chiefly on portraiture and historic painting, his etchings covered a much broader range of subjects: in addition to genre scenes and landscapes, there are also nudes, allegories and study sheets.

Drawing directly on the copper plate, in etching Rembrandt found a deeply personal means of expression at a young age. Core characteristics include the sketch-like strokes and variations in the density and depth of the line work. While changes of state were initially used primarily for correction purposes, the artist later experimented quite deliberately with revisions. Not infrequently, individual sections were accentuated with a burin or drypoint. 

The printing ink that collects in the areas exposed as a result gives the sheets a velvety soft atmosphere. Rembrandt also knew how to incorporate the different effects of special papers or the colour residues on the copper, known as plate tone, into the design of his images.

Mezzotint: la manière anglaise 

The spread of the mezzotint technique, especially in England during the 18th and early 19th centuries, owed much to the sophisticated painting culture that had developed in Georgian London and was already starting to illuminate the path ahead to Modernism. Initially centred on portraiture, the technique received additional impetus from landscape painting in the mid-18th century. Until around 1775, this technique was chiefly entrusted to the hands of Irish specialists. Thomas Frye, like many of his Irish compatriots, moved to London at a young age. His best-known work consists of two series of mezzotint portraits created between 1760 and 1762.

John Martin specialised in depictions of fateful events – often based on the Old Testament – in which massive cities or ancient civilisations are threatened by flooding, storms or earthquakes. From 1821 onwards, he was keen to make images from his own imagination available to a wider public through printmaking. He used a new method in which the copper plate was replaced by soft steel, allowing even finer tonal transitions and larger print runs. However, printing from the large-format plates with their highly sensitive surface was an exceptionally demanding process, meaning that it was only possible to produce eight to ten prints a day.

Francisco de Goya 

Francisco de Goya explores the night-time dimension of his own being, penetrating previously hidden areas of the human soul and showing that the eerie is at home in humanity itself. Goya’s demons trigger the artist’s imagination or ultimately become cruel reality in his dramatic depictions of wars and abnormal situations borne of human existence. While he specifically has in mind the atrocities committed by Napoleon’s soldiers in battle with the Spanish population, which had risen up against French occupation, his images are representative of a continent that had been rent asunder and ruined by armed conflict for over 20 years: reason has departed. Its sleep gives birth to monsters.

Goya reacted to the upheaval of his time through his depiction of the weird and wonderful in his Caprichos. Tracing a tremendous thematic and visual spectrum, his Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War) series defies common aesthetics and refuses to be assigned to classical themes or genres. The new topics he envisages are intended to reveal and critically illustrate the underlying human conditions of existence. Goya addresses the dark, invisible areas of consciousness in which the imagination unfurls uncontrollably.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: trapped in the infinite 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who was also an architect, art theorist and publisher, was among the most important and productive Italian etchers of the 18th century. In 1756, he surveyed countless buildings of ancient Rome. Using the information gathered during his research, he published a collection of images of Roman antiquities in the four-volume Antichità romane, which stands out for its impressive depictions as well as precise floor plans and elevations. The work earned the 36-year-old an international reputation as an archaeologist.

Piranesi’s graphic oeuvre comprises more than a thousand etched plates, the most famous of which is a series of imaginative depictions of dungeons, first printed in Rome in 1749/50. Piranesi creates his prison views out of structural elements including giant stone blocks, bridges, arches, vaults and pillars, which penetrate the space in deep sloping lines, crossing each other in myriad ways and towering ever further towards the heavens. The low vantage point and the marked reduction in the size of the figures and architectural elements shown beneath compounds the monumental scale of these utopian dungeon scenes. In the Carceri, Piranesi employs line work that is more redolent of sketching than that in his archaeological images, which take inspiration from Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s etchings. The lines are scribed using needles of different widths before being etched multiple times. Through the vitality of their style, they convey the impression of pen and ink drawings.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: on the stage of life 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec joins a host of exceptional artists whose creativity and exceptional sensitivity were accompanied – or perhaps even inspired – by physical or mental suffering. Born into an old aristocratic family in the south of France, Toulouse-Lautrec was troubled by a severe genetic disorder from childhood. This makes his achievements all the more exceptional, as evidenced by an extensive oeuvre consisting of paintings and, above all, lithographs.

He was brought up in an artistic environment. Besides being passionate hunters, his father and one of his uncles were dedicated amateur painters. In 1884, Toulouse-Lautrec moved into his own studio in Montmartre, where mainly simple tradesmen, workers and low-status employees were attracted by cheap rents. Countless other artists set up shop there, alongside numerous établissements. He was a regular patron of the neighbourhood’s nightclubs, bars, cabaret venues, dance halls and cafés. The dancers, actresses, singers and acrobats, as well as the prostitutes and their clients, became his preferred subjects. From 1891 Toulouse-Lautrec turned his hand to colour lithography, which in his view was equal to  painting in terms of its expressiveness.

Artist posters: the visual scandal 

In the second half of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution saw the Western world undergo a period of rapid economic and technological development that changed both society and the art world forever. Inspired by modern English machines for wallpaper printing, the printer Jules Chéret pioneered the use of the illustrated poster in Paris in the 1870s, triggering an aesthetic revolution. It was said that Chéret had turned Paris into an open-air museum and hoped to bring about the “aesthetic education of the population”. But a good poster was not simply there to please; above all it had to catch the eye – which soon also applied to the pictures displayed in the city’s crowded salons. Right from the outset, illustrated posters were about breaking taboos, being ambiguous and advertising all kinds of vices. The principle of advertising being visually striking entered into the vernacular of modernist art.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was the first major painter to dedicate himself to this new medium, which was beginning to shape the cityscape. Starting in 1891, a total of 30 posters for the artists of the vaudevilles and cabarets in Montmartre went into print.

Colour woodcut in Vienna around 1900: the world of beauty 

The Secession artists association broke new ground in the visual arts, becoming the epicentre of Wiener Jugendstil or Viennese Art Nouveau. In their exhibition venue near the Naschmarkt, the Secessionists not only presented their own works but also gave prominence to international artists including the French Impressionists, with a view to introducing modernism to a wider public. All genres – architecture, painting, arts and crafts, and graphic art – stood on an equal footing: the movement’s overarching ethos was for art to permeate all areas of life. The Secession also played a central role in the development of the modern colour woodcut: prominent members including Carl Moll, Koloman Moser and Maximilian Kurzweil helped the traditional art of printing to flourish again between 1900 and 1910.

Fin-de-siècle Viennese woodcuts were characterised by the highest level of selectivity and virtuosity of craftsmanship. The emphasis on outlines, the stylisation and flattening of motifs inspired by Japonism, and playing with colour contrasts corresponded to the new formal ideals of Viennese Art Nouveau. Reflecting the growing popularity of Jugendstil motifs, decorative depictions of elegant ladies, exotic animals and peaceful snowy landscapes were in great demand. They celebrated ostentatious idleness and catered to the tastes of a cultivated audience that was seeking to withdraw entirely into a spiritualised world of beauty.

Edvard Munch: symbols of remembrance 

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is considered a key protagonist of modernism and a pioneer of expressionism. His pictorial inventions and the topics they cover are particularly touching due to their lack of precedent, which also imbues them with a deeper sense of otherworldliness. Images such as The Scream have become universal ciphers of elementary human feelings. Munch’s works are based on his own subjective experiences: “I don’t paint what I see, but what I saw.” Like his highly personal world of forms and colours, his new iconography was based on the formative power of memory, and the transformation of experiences and feelings through psychological processing.

Due to the misfortune that had affected him since early childhood, existential themes such as fear, loneliness, illness and death were close to his heart. It became characteristic of Munch to detach the figures from their narrative context and have them confront the viewer directly. 

By presenting his subjects front-on he was able to create intimacy and presence. This is particularly evident in his impressive oeuvre of printed works, of which over 750 pieces survive in around 30,000 prints. Edvard Munch’s first prints were born of commercial expediency that was informed by an understanding that prints were cheaper and, as a result, easier to sell than paintings. During his stay in Paris in 1896 at the latest, Munch recognised that the distinctive expressive values of colour lithography, etching and woodcut were on a par with painting.

Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard: the Nabis 

Le nabi très japonard (the very Japanese “nabi”) is what contemporaries called the painter and graphic artist Pierre Bonnard, alluding to his membership of the Confrérie des Nabis – a group of artists who were deeply inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. Steeped in mystery, the term nabis – a word borrowed from the Hebrew for “prophet” – was adopted by several artists including Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard, who saw themselves as part of a kind of secret society. They wanted to excise the taint of illusionism, naturalism and academism from painting and restore its original decorative function.

The Nabis also harboured an interest in naïve, religious folk art, which they encountered at various locations including Pont-Aven in Brittany. They believed that the originality, innocence, purity and authenticity of art only truly existed among “primitives” – in their view, in ancient or exotic cultures such as that of Japan. They felt that rather than being the exclusive preserve of a privileged class, art should benefit all of humanity. Ideologically speaking, these artists were close to like-minded writers, journalists, intellectuals and left-liberal or anarchist circles in France. Several media, including the literary magazine La revue blanche, were dedicated to spreading such noble goals.

Expressionist prints: discovery of the “primitive”  

For expressionist artists, printmaking became an existential medium that was on a par with painting and drawing. In printmaking in general, and woodcut in particular, they identified a fresh opportunity for artistic expression that was able to bring a new dimension to painting. 

German expressionist artists turned to woodcuts in a way they had not done since the time of Dürer, manifesting the elemental expressiveness inherent in expressionism most directly in handcrafted printing blocks. These artists felt it was essential that they master woodcut techniques for themselves so that no-one else was involved in the process between the design and the final print.

In a manner of speaking, woodcut represents the essence of what is understood by expressionism and its essential contribution to European art in the first half of the 20th century. By reducing form and style to bold lines and surfaces, the primitiveness emerges that many expressionist artists strove to capture in their work. Turning their backs on images of external reality is an expression of their quest for originality, in which they propagated a return to the very origins of art – which they saw preserved in what is termed primitive culture.

Käthe Kollwitz: work and hardship 

Käthe Kollwitz’s outstanding artistic skills were instantly recognised by leading figures on the Berlin cultural scene, such as Max Liebermann and Friedrich Lippmann, as well as the director of Dresden’s Kupferstich-Kabinett museum Max Lehrs, when Revolt of the Weavers – her first monumental print series – came to the attention of a wider audience at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898. However, Kollwitz did not necessarily acquiesce to the frequently expressed wish that her talent should be considered independently of party-political or gender-specific attributions, because social commitment was so hugely important to her. All of the men closest to her – her father, her brother and her husband – were active members of the German Social Democratic Party.

And almost from the beginning, her visual language revealed an intense interest in graphic stylisation and, by association, the printmaker’s craft. Noting this, her teacher Karl Stauffer-Bern pointed her in the direction of his friend Max Klinger, whose unique Griffekunst or stylus art she enthusiastically embraced. The sculptures of Auguste Rodin are also believed to have been very important for Kollwitz. She adhered to the principle of the physical manifestation of motifs when, inspired by the younger expressionists and Ernst Barlach, she turned her attention to woodcut.

Joan Miró: form follows fiction 

Joan Miró was one of the most popular artists of the 20th century. After escaping the parochialism of his homeland for Paris, the Catalonian artist went on to form close friendships with the Dadaists. They encouraged him to go beyond the academic boundaries of painting and open himself up to dreams, the unconscious mind, and chance. By the mid-1920s, he had made the transition and become a Dadaist or Surrealist himself. “I went about quite a bit that year with poets” Miró later recalled of the Surrealist revolution, “because I felt that it was necessary to go a step beyond the strictly plastic and bring some poetry into painting.”

Miró only turned to printmaking in 1930, after he had developed his characteristic style, producing coloured lithographs and linocuts from 1948 onwards, which initiated the start of the Catalan artist’s actual printmaking work. Throughout his life, Miró attached great importance to giving a musical, poetic and playful meaning to his expression: harmonies meet dissonances, free movement of the stroke meets the line as a psychogram, deep black meets coloured surfaces. The absence of perspective and the ambivalence of the shapes he depicts – always with black lines coexisting with colourful surfaces – are defining formal elements of his compositions. The repertoire of his symbolic pictorial elements includes childlike figures that look like monsters, as well as stars and suns; the interpretation of the motifs that go into the abstract is uncertain.

Colour as a principle 

The Blue Rider (German: “Der Blaue Reiter”) was a loose grouping of artists named after the almanac first published by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1912 in Munich. In 1911 and 1912 the group staged two exhibitions showcasing works by artists who pursued similar artistic ideas to those of Kandinsky and Marc.

The almanac was based on the principle of comparing artworks from different peoples and epochs, juxtaposing them with the current avant-garde and old masters – a comparison that transcended all formal boundaries and artistic genres, but also a juxtaposition “high art” and “low art”, African sculpture, folk reverse glass paintings and children’s drawings.

From 1910 onwards, the horse occupied a central position in Marc’s work. At the same time, he explored the bright colours and simplified contours that characterise works by Matisse, Macke and Kandinsky. As Marc prophesied at the time: “We will no longer paint the forest or the horse as they please us or appear to us, but as they really are, as the forest or the horse itself feels, their absolute essence that lives behind the appearance we only see.” In 1911, he painted his famous Blue Horse I. He went on to alter the blue horse motif many times, portraying individual horses as well as groups of horses, including in the colour woodcut Resting Horses.