1

It�s a while since I posted about the master of the Art Deco nude, �douard Chimot. Of course if Chimot were simply a depictor of the nude, there wouldn�t be much to say about him�boudoir pictures are boudoir pictures, and that�s it. But Chimot is a much more complex artist than that�one in whom the twin themes of Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death, are inextricably intertwined. �douard Chimot, Le caf�-concert maudit Colour etching with aquatint for La mont�e aux enfers, 1920 Of course Love sells better than Death, so sensuous nudes inevitably predominate in �douard Chimot�s work. But his obsession with prostitutes, drug addicts, and good girls gone bad, means that the spectre of death and destitution hovers behind and around Chimot�s nudes, turning them from decorative erotica into perverse memento mori. They are women �soumises � leurs passions mortelles et d�licieuses�, as the critic Andr� Warnod put it. �douard Chimot, La Mort Etching with aquatint for L'enfer, 1921 In my previou

K�the Kollwitz and Paula Modersohn-Becker are the two most famous female artists in early twentieth-century Germany, but they were by no means alone: there are plenty of interesting women working alongside them. Gabriele M�nter, Jacoba van Heemskerck, and Marianne von Werefkin are just three of the more well-known names. As I've recently acquired two etchings by Kollwitz, I thought I'd post these alongside some work by other female artists of the period with less of a public profile. K�the Kollwitz was born K�the Schmidt in K�nigsberg in 1867. She made her initial studies at an art school for women in Berlin, where her teacher was Karl Stauffer-Bern; she then went to the Women's Art School in Munich. From 1891 she lived and worked in Berlin, where her husband Karl was a doctor. Kollwitz is widely recognised as one of the most important etchers of her day. Her art expresses a profound sympathy with the lives of the poor, as in her early masterworks for the series The Revolt

I've just discovered that the house of Hermann Struck in Haifa has this October been turned into the Hermann Struck Museum , with an opening exhibition of his etchings. I'm thrilled to think this brilliant and influential etcher is at last getting his due. So I thought I would share the Hermann Struck etchings I have. Struck was born in Berlin in 1876. His birth name was Chaim Aaron ben David, and his Jewish heritage is central to his work - most of the original works below have Hebrew inscriptions or Stars of David incised in the plate in drypoint. An early Zionist, Hermann Struck settled in Palestine, in what is now Haifa, Israel, in December 1922. All of my works date from before this time (although I give the date of his portrait of Chagall as 1923, that is the date of publication, and presumably the actual work was made in or around 1922). Evidently Struck had an active life as artist, mentor, and teacher in Israel, but I don't have any direct evidence of this to show.

You might not recognize the name of Marcellin Desboutin, but you would know him if you saw him in the street. His is the bearded, dishevelled face staring despairingly out at you from a table in the artists' caf� La Nouvelle Ath�nes in the painting   L'Absinthe (Dans un Caf�) by Edgar Degas. The women sitting next to him is the actress Ellen Andr�; like the rest of the Impressionists, Degas preferred to use members of his immediate social circle rather than paid models. Once you have committed Desboutin's face to memory, you will chance upon it again and again in works by Degas and other artists, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Falgui�re; often he is smoking a pipe. His tramp-like appearance made him the ideal sitter if you wanted to paint a down-and-out old drunk. Marcellin Desboutin, Desboutin dit � la bavette (aslo known as Desboutin tenant sa pipe de la main gauche, or as L'auteur fumant, � mi-corps) Drypoint, 1897 Ref: Cl�ment Janin 67 Actually, Marcellin Gilb