Erich Heckel Lot n° 127

Erich Heckel White Horses 1912 Original color woodcut on copperplate paper. 26.7/31 x 31/31.5 cm (39.5 x 41.4 cm). Framed under glass. Signed and dated, titled and inscribed 'Farb.Holzsch. Handprint'. The publisher I.B. Neumann, Berlin, issued an unnumbered edition of 80 copies as well as additional prints outside the edition. - Few small losses in the image. Closed tear in lower margin. Ebner/Gabelmann 531 H b.1.III; Dube H 242 b.1.IV. The woodcut has been included in the Erich Heckel Archive, Hemmenhofen, where it is recorded. We would like to thank Renate Ebner, Erich Heckel Estate, for kind information. Provenance Formerly Selman Neuman, art and antiques dealer, Stockholm; since then in family ownership, Sweden "White Horses" is one of the most impressive masterpieces of Expressionist printmaking. Erich Heckel found the striking motif of horses and people struggling against the wind during his stay on the islands of Hiddensee and Fehmarn in the summer of 1912. The brittle character of the woodcut proved to be the ideal medium for capturing the force of nature and the unity of man and animal in reduced pictorial symbols. Heckel met the art dealer Israel Ber Neumann, who ran a printmaking cabinet in Berlin, in 1912, the year of his stay at the Baltic Sea. Neumann became his most important print dealer and published the "White Horses", among other things. Heckel inked the color block individually for each print in the manner of a monotype, so that each copy has unique characteristics in terms of the printed image, the inking and the paper.