Lithograph on imitation Japan paper, 1919. 556x703 mm; 21 7/8x27 5/8 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 31/75 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Naumann, Frankfurt am Main. Published by I. B. Neumann, Berlin. From Die Hölle. A superb, richly-inked impression of this tour-de-force German Expressionist lithograph.
Beckmann made a painting of the same subject, begun in August 1918 and completed in March 1919, which is now in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Both the oil and lithograph, which show two figures being tortured in a delapidated garret by several menacing-looking thugs, portray the violence and brutality of the riots which swept Berlin in November 1918 with the founding of the Weimar Republic. Hofmaier 145.
