THEODOR-PAUL ETBAUER (1892-1975) SCHWARZ WEISS REDOUTE. Circa 1920. 231/2x351/2 inches. Werbe-Werk, Hamburg. Condition A. Paper. Etbauer is best remembered for the travel posters he designed for the Hamburg America Line in the 1930s featuring their zeppelins and ocean liners. In the previous decade, when he was a young avant-garde artist, his style was very different. In the February 1920 issue of Das Plakat magazine, Etbauer took out a full page advertisement for his School of Culture Through Experience (Schule fur Erlebnis Kulture), to promote a course that combined acting, pantomime, music and drawing. The advertisement features a drawing very similar to this poster, for a ball that may well have been thrown by and for the same Hamburg circle of artists who would have attended his school. Using only black and white he depicts three dancers in a wildly distorted geometric dance, with hints of cubism and expressionism combined in the design.
