Kanal, 1919

Lithograph print 

Signed lower right in pencil and in plate

16 by 12 inches (page)

9 1/2 by 7 inches (image) 

Published by Euphorion Verlag, Berlin

From Die Schaffenden, 1. Jahrgang, 4. Mappe, 1919. From the printing of 125.

Fine vintage condition. Never framed with partial publisher blindstamp lower right corner. 

From a large group of German Expressionist prints from the Ismar Littmann Family Collection of German Expressionism and European Avant-Garde. As Swann wrote in its 2019 offering where this print was purchased, “Few collectors in Breslau during the early 1900s had a passion for connoisseurship, collecting and the visual arts equal to Ismar Littmann (1878-1934). Born in Gross Strehlitz, Upper Silesia, between Breslau and Kraków, Littmann completed doctoral studies of law in 1902 and several years later settled in Breslau where he established a legal practice. As his business grew over the next decade and he became enmeshed in Breslau’s art scene, Littmann began acquiring art with an unabated intensity from the late 1910s to the late 1920s. He married Käthe Frankel in 1907 and partnered with the lawyer Max Loewe to establish the firm of Littmann and Loewe around 1921.

By the end of the 1920s, Littmann had amassed a collection of more than 6,000 works of art, incorporating some 300 oil paintings, 50 major watercolors and the remainder (more than 5,500 total), predominantly works on paper, including prints and drawings. His pursuit, aside from an unbridled enthusiasm for collecting, appears to have been ultimately to establish a permanent public collection for many of his works. Though he lent some to significant exhibitions in Breslau in 1929, 1930 and 1933, and was a co-founder of the Breslau Jewish Museum, his vision for a public collection went unfulfilled, halted by the Nazis’ rise to power and his ensuing personal misfortune.