German Expressionist Prints: The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum

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Summary: A "must" for art history buff supplemental reading lists
Review: An impressive collaborative project of the Hudson Hills Press and the Milwaukee Art Museum, German Expressionist Prints: The Marcia And Granvil Specks Collection is a striking artbook portraying black and white imagery, reflecting the positive and negative facets of German life from the 1890s to the 1930s. Bold figures of over 475 prints with brief biographies of the artists who created them and commentaries upon the art form itself make German Expressionist Prints a "must" especially for art history buff supplemental reading lists in general, and academic library German art history collections in particular!


Rating:
Summary: German Expressionism in Prints
Review: German Expressionist Prints: The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Stephanie D'Alessandro, James Deyoung, David Gordon, Reinhold Heller, Sarah B. Kirk, Kristin Marholm, Gretchen L. Wagner, Milwaukee Museum of Art (Hudson Hills Press) 531 colorplates and 9 black-and-white illustrations A good overview of prints by early 20th Century masters.
Widely acclaimed as one of the most significant bodies of German Expressionist prints in the United States, The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection is noted for its high quality, breadth, and profound graphic power. In celebration of its gift to the Milwaukee Art Museum, it is presented here for the first time as a whole, as a body of imagery that reveals the myriad concerns of the age-the joys and pain of life in Germany from the 1890s to the 1930s.
The Specks collection is a vast mirror reflecting that complicated and fiery period when printmaking asserted itself, when images impressed on paper became the most profound and exacting expressions of the age. From the tragic and sorrowful prints of Käthe Kollwitz to the profoundly human religious woodcuts of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff to the biting satire of radical artist George Grosz, the collection illuminates the sense of urgency, originality, and vision of a wide range of artists, all attempting to limn a shifting world of despair, hope, and renewal in the fragile years from the Second Empire to the rise of the Nazis. Etchings and drypoints of biting spontaneity and intensity, lithographs of corrosive ingenuity, woodcuts to stir the soul, heralded an era of individuality and democracy in visions of a new society that could be reproduced, illustrated, and mass produced to reach the most remote and casual of observers. Emotionally, technically, and rebelliously, prints offered artists fresh directions and challenges at a time of intense preoccupation and ultimately disillusionment with society and the world.
Within this broad terrain, the publication of The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection constitutes an extraordinary opportunity to delve assiduously into an entire generation of remarkable images and artists. The stunning quality and vast range of prints, personally researched and selected by the Specks during countless trips to Europe over three decades, offer riches unparalleled in any other American collection of Expressionist prints-everything from the most iconic, rare impressions to remarkable prints by artists little known in the United States. In its totality the collection invites repeated viewing and comparison of similar themes and media by an array of artists over several decades. In its specifics there are areas of strength that reach the highest levels of excellence, importance, and expressive mastery.
In addition to the illustrated catalogue of over 475 prints accompanied by biographies of the artists, the book includes essays discussing issues of visual culture and representation by leading scholars in the field: Reinhold Heller, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Chicago; and Stephanie D'Alessandro, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago. The Milwaukee Art Museum's Senior Conservator James deYoung contributes a study of the papers used in their prints.