May 21, 2009 - Sale 2181

Sale 2181 - Lot 16

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
FRANZ VON STUCK (1863-1928) INTERNATIONALE HYGIENE AUSSTELLUNG / DRESDEN. 1911.
35x23 1/2 inches, 89x59 1/2 cm. Leutert & Schneidewind A.G., Dresden.
Condition B+ / A-: repaired tears at edges, some slightly affecting image; creases and abrasions in margins and image.
A painter, architect and graphic designer, von Stuck was a founding member of the Munich Secession in 1893, and a cartoonist for the magazine Jugend. He later became a professor at the Akademie. This idea of a striking object against a blue background with surrounding antique Greek columns is not Stuck's invention. Sutterlin used the same concept in 1896 for a building exhibition in Berlin, using as his central motif a hand with a hammer. But von Stuck's image, with a huge eye watching passers-by, was much stronger and proved to be a tremendous success. An image that obviously fascinated the surrealists (and perhaps had its roots in Masonic imagery), it was stolen by a cigarette company, cartooned in Die Lustige Blatter and later, in 1930, was revamped by Billy Petzold for the same exhibition. It is a poster that made history and is history. This is the larger format. A smaller version was printed by Meisenbach Riffarth & Co., Berlin. DFP III 3221 (var), Rademacher p. 60 (var), Rademacher p. 90, Affiches Mirroir 45, Munich 300.