Lot 503 Dα

Heinrich Vogeler's etchings develop a loosely connected series of landscape motifs which are centred around the Barkenhoff in Worpswede and seem to cyclically encompass a day. The portfolio comprises the prints: “Die Lerche”, “Frühlingsmorgen”, “Um Mittag”, “Frühlingsblumen”, “Froschbraut”, “Der Fischer”, “Storch überm Weiher”, “Vor Feierabend”, “Die Amsel” and “Märznacht”. Here the artist's visual poetry permits itself every liberty in terms of invention and creative paraphrase. These stylised impressions are devoted to spring's omnipresent awakening in nature - from the artist's early encounter with the lark rejoicing above the flat landscape to the twinkling of the stars above the dark farmstead on a glass-clear and still-cold night in March. “An den Frühling” was published at Christmas in 1899: it is a masterpiece of the art of printmaking and remains a characteristic example of the distinctive variation of Symbolism within German Jugendstil, which Heinrich Vogeler decisively and formatively helped to initiate. His aesthetic concepts were nourished by many sources. Romantic elements mix with biographical ones, visual-art ideals with literary elements, English Pre-Raphaelitism with Japonisme. Today as well, however, the selection of natural motifs singled out in the portfolio may appear exemplary and of prophetic significance. In view of the menacing losses all around us, they stand not so much for artificial and imagined paradises, but for actually endangered earthly ones. In connection with the efforts made to establish a modern reform of artistic book design and illustration in his period, the publication of the portfolio “An den Frühling” was substantially programmatic. In the now extremely rare, handmade special edition made with select materials, it is additionally one of the earliest bibliophile editions of the Insel publishing house, which would become legendary, and it is intended in the sense of a graphic Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art.