Der Zeichner, Original Etching, 1900s

Der Zeichner is a superb etching made around 1900 by a still unknown author, but surely from the circle of Max Klinger (Leipzig, 1857 - Grossjena, 1920). Title on plate in the lower margin in the center. Posthumous impression of a matrix by an unknown author. The style refers to the Griffelkunst and the prescriptions of the Max Klinger ''school of stylus''and of the artists who were close to him. In particular, for the subject in question, in the circle of Max Klinger, Sascha Schneider stands out, who placed male nudity at the center of his production and his formal research. The title, Der Zeichner, recalls that of the Klinger's treaty ''Malerei und Zeichnung'' and the meanings attached to it, that is, it combines in the figuration and in the poetics the liberating dictates and instances of the so-called reform of life and the neo-Greek cult of the body, also the homoerotic sense, carried out by Sascha Schneider himself and by German magazines such as ''Die Schonheit'' and ''Der Eigene''. Very interesting work, made with an infinite variety of strokes and a wide range of tones from black to white, in excellent condition and in good general preservation, except for minimal marginal tears and some marginal folds. Sascha Schneider, stage name of Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider (St. Petersburg, 1870 - Swinemünde, 1927). The German painter and sculptor enters the world of art when, in 1903 he meets the famous writer Karl May and soon became the illustrator of the covers of his books Winnetou, Old Surehand, Am Rio de la Plata. A year later, in 1904, Schneider was appointed professor at the Großherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstschule Weimar in Weimar. During this period he lived a not happy cohabitation with the painter Hellmuth Jahn, who woul make public the Schneider's homosexuality (at the time punishable under article 175 of the penal code). So he decided to move to Italy, where homosexuality was not considered a crime. Here Schneider met the painter Robert Spies with whom he began a journey in the mountains of the Caucasus chain. He eventually returned to Germany where he stayed for about six months in Leipzig before returning to Italy, settling in Florence. After 1918 he founded the Kraft-Kunst institute for body building, an environment that provided him with many models for his works.