Bildnis Valentiner II. 1923.
Woodcut.
Signed and inscribed with the work number "2333". On wove paper. 49.5 x 39.2 cm (19.4 x 15.4 in). Sheet: 70 x 56 cm (27,5 x 22 in).
[CH].
• The art historian Wilhelm R. Valentiner (1880-1958), pictured here, published his first monograph on Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in 1920 and was considered one of his most important patrons at the time.
• Before the First World War, Valentiner was curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and from 1924 he was director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
• Schmidt-Rottluff succeeded in transferring Valentiner's striking features and objects that characterized him in their liveliness into the monochromatic woodcut.
• With the help of the so-called white line cut, he portrayed Valentiner from lines scratched into the wood block, some of which are hatched, so that the depiction consists exclusively of the white lines that do not appear in the print.
• In the past 30 years, only one other copy of this woodcut has been offered on the international auction market (source: artprice).

The work is registered in the Hermann Gerlinger Collection as SHG 225a.

PROVENANCE: Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (acquired in 2011, with the collector's stamp, Lugt 6032).

LITERATURE: Rosa Schapire, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Graphisches Werk bis 1923, Berlin 1924, no. H 298 (illu., plate vol.).
Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 867th auction, Moderne Kunst, December 4, 2004, lot 1321 (illu.).
Bassenge, Berlin, Moderne Kunst, May 28, 2011, lot 8266 (illu.).

In good condition. Minimally creased in the broad margin. With isolated small, partly expertly closed tears in the edges as well as with small skinned spots in the left margin. A few small brown spots, mainly in the margins.