Tappert, Georg (1880-1957), Passion, 1917 (1964)

Georg Tappert(1880 Berlin - 1957 Berlin), Cover illustration for Rudolf Adrian's “Passion” , 1917 (1964). Wietek 71. Estate print from 1964. Linocut on Japan, 15.5 cm x 12 cm (depiction), 19.5 cm x 16 cm (sheet size), marked lower left in lead as copy 4/15, with the estate stamp on the reverse and signed by the artist's wife, Anneliese Tappert.

- in very good condition

- The passion of modernism -

The expressionist cityscape is a landscape of doom. The world has come apart at the seams with the destructive battles of the First World War. In the background, chimneys rise into the black sky, in whose clouds of death a skeleton and a diabolical grimace become visible. The houses below look like an impenetrable wall. A naked woman lies at the lower edge of the picture - an allusion to the nudes of the Renaissance lying in nature, which stand for the beauty of creation. Nature, indeed creation as such, has perished, so that the woman covers her eyes in horror and is herself flanked by a skull, while another female figure leaves the picture to the right. She seems to have lost her physiognomy and thus stands for the loss of the human. The center of the picture is dominated by a large, slanted head whose face is reminiscent of the face of prophets and Christ. It is crammed in by the buildings and the upward gaze does not look up into the sky, but into the dark clouds of death. There is no redemption from the destruction.

Georg Tappert creates an expressionist allegory of doom here, which intensely translates the existential feeling of bottomlessness into a pictorial form.

About the artist

After studying at the Karlsruhe Art Academy from 1900 to 1903 and an interlude at the Burg Saaleck Art School, Georg Tappert returned to Berlin in 1905, where his works were exhibited by Paul Cassirer. From 1906 to 1908, Tappert lived in the Worpswede artists' colony and ran an art school there. His most important student was Wilhelm Morgner, who died during World War I and whose estate Tappert later worked on. In Worpswede he met Paula Modersohn-Becker, whose art inspired him. When Tappert returned to Berlin in 1910, his works were rejected by the Berlin Secession, and he and Max Pechstein founded the New Secession, which lasted until 1914 and included Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, bringing together artists from the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter. In 1911, together with Käthe Kollwitz, he founded the "Juryfreie" exhibition in Berlin, and in 1918 he co-founded the "Novembergruppe" and the "Arbeitsrat für Kunst". In 1921 he was appointed professor at the Königliche Kunstschule. The Nazis removed him from his post in 1937 and in the same year removed many of his works from museums as 'degenerate'. Tappert withdrew into inner emigration, painting mainly landscapes. After the war, he devoted himself to rebuilding the Kunstgewerbeschule, which he merged with the Kunstgewerbeschule under Karl Hofer.