As one of the leading galleries for German Expressionist prints and works on paper, the Berlin based Jörg Maass Kunsthandel presents a view on German printmaking in the 20th Century with a focus on the first decades comparing to examples after WW II.

The exhibition shows the wide diversity of German printmaking but also the continuity in German artistic tradition. At the beginning of last century the members of the Brücke – group (1905-1913) became particularly interested in the graphic medium and took up etching and lithography in addition to woodcut and they devised for themselves a range of techniques and styles of unprecedentes originality and remarkable ambition.

In 1913 the Brücke finally broke up – only one year before the outbreak of WWI, which marks the first cesura in German history and artistic tradition in the 20th century.

Otto Dix and Max Beckmann became dominat figures after WWI. Beckmann has his own language between Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit, Otto Dix became the primary representative of Neue Sachlichkeit.

In parallel the Bauhaus was founded in 1919 which became the domain of Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Lothar Schreyer and which was the turning point towards abstraction - also in printmaking. Post-war artists like Rupprecht Geiger and Gerhard Hoehme picked up these pre-war traditions in the 1950’s and created their own abstract artistic language.