OTTO GLEICHMANN (1887 Mainz - 1963 Hannover) Lot n° 34

"The street" Drawing on brownish, partly perforated wove paper. 1920. 33,7 x 23,5 cm. Signed in pencil lower right "O. Gleichmann", dated and titled. The street of 1920 is a perspective distorted, oppressively narrow and ophtalmically challenging affair. In twitching strokes, the artist outlines a scenario whose components vibrate across the sheet in their own motion. Completely disregarding the diagonally sloping ground, man and beast stand together in ghostly unison to fix the viewer with a fixed gaze. From the oversized, long-nosed faces look the gleichmann-typical, wide gaping eyes with wildly rolling pupils. And the small-scale ornamented city architecture fanned out in the background also defies any static and tilts away to either side. Dynamic line formations whirring above the image and a semi-circular alignment of the staffage in the lower edge of the picture ignore the pointed-cornered conditions of the medium and close the small world that is round in itself.