Description

A fine miniature woodcut print by the artist Hermann Fechenbach (1897-1986). Depicting a female figure kneeling at an alter. Printed on fine tissue paper. Signed in plate.

Condition

With some minor foxing. Overall in fine condition.

Collection Information

From a series of woodcuts by Hermann Fechenbach (1897-1986) for the series 'Genesis' which he began in 1924. The full collection of prints entitled 'Genesis, First Book of Moses' was published in 1969.

Biography

Hermann Fechenbach (1897-1986) was a German-Jewish graphic artist who specialized in wood and linocut. Fechenbach grew up in a long established Jewish community in Bad Mergentheim. After a short commercial apprenticeship he attended the School of Applied Arts in Erfurt, and worked as a decorator in Dortmund until the beginning of the First World War. In 1916 Fechenbach was drafted into military service, and was severely wounded in August 1917. At the end of the war Fechenbach attended the School of Applied Arts in Stuttgart and later moved to the State Academy of Applied Arts in Munich in 1923.

In 1930 he married the photographer Margarete Batzke. Fechembach and his wife fled Germany for the UK in 1939. He was interned on the Isle of Man for ten months, however after his release in 1941 Fechenbach moved to Oxford, and later to London. In addition to his artistic career he worked as a porcelain restorer. In 1962 the couple moved to Denham where they retired.

In 1924 Fechenbach travelled to Florence to study, here he began a series on prints entitled 'Book of Genesis', the series consisted of 135 woodcuts and appeared in an edition of 200 copies. Fechenbach's experience of emigration and upheaval during WWII greatly effected him and led to the cycle of woodcuts "My Impressions as Refugee" (1941-1945), which appeared in small editions. They are widely regarded as Fechenbach's strongest and most important work.