?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
JOHAN THORN PRIKKER (1868-1932) HOLLANDISCHE KUNSTAUSSTELLUNG / KREFELD. 1903. 33 1/2x47 1/2 inches. S. Lankhout, Haag. Condition A-: minor repaired tears in margins. Framed. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, Thorn Prikker went on to become an artist in many mediums, including painting, stained glass and mosaics. In 1903, he moved to Germany where he began teaching at the art school in Krefeld. These three extremely rare posters were commissioned by Friedrich Deneken, the director of Krefeld's Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, as part of a collaborative relationship with Thorn Prikker. This is the most famous of the three posters, consistently exhibited as a classic example of Dutch Art Nouveau style. It "demonstrates the restraint and symmetry manifested by the Art Nouveau style as adapted in Holland. The juxtaposition of positive and negative, dark and light versions of the same interlaced patterns is allied with a similar succession found in Celtic manuscript borders. The tulip-like floral forms, indicative of the Netherlands, are combined with shapes related to the decorations on the batik, or wax-resist, textiles of Java. In the sidewise green "L" with orange circles is a reflection of a conventional arrangement in the Book of Kells. While the colors in the poster are as brilliant as Gaudi's stained glass panels in Barcelona, they are confined within a framework as rectilinear as the designs of Mackintosh in Glasgow. Prikker's poster embodies the reasoned Dutch approach to Art Nouveau, harmonizing exotic Javanese allusion with medieval decorative tradition, tempering severity with sensibility."(http://www.nelson-atkins.org/collections/printdrawphoto/detail/dutchartexhib.htm). Dutch Poster p. 97, Modern Poster p. 68, Plakat Kunst p. 52, Century p. 182, Wember 753.
