Hunterian curator Peter Black with colleagues looking at German Expressionist prints in the Hunterian Art Gallery.The Hunterian has recently purchased two important German Expressionist prints with support from the Artfund - Max Beckmann’s drypoint Adam und Eva of 1917, and Emil Nolde’s Schriftgelehrte (Scribes), an etching of 1911.

The Hunterian houses one of the largest collections of German Expressionist prints in the UK, with many important works by artists such as Klinger, Munch, Kokoschka, Schiele, Modersohn-Becker, Kollwitz, Pechstein, and Schmidt-Rottluff.

The rough expressive power of woodcut and other graphic techniques drew numerous German artists to the medium of printmaking in the period 1890-1930. The Hunterian’s strong holdings of these prints, from one of the most interesting periods of the history of printmaking, have resulted not from gifts, but curatorial collecting, especially in the 1960s by Deputy Keeper of the Art Collections, Dennis Farr, who went on to become Director of the Courtauld Gallery.

Curator Peter Black is pictured here showing the prints to University of Glasgow colleagues who use Hunterian collections in their teaching. They are Dr Deborah Lewer, Senior Lecturer in History of Art, and a specialist on Expressionism and Dada, and Lecturer in German, Dr Ernest Schonfield, who is a specialist on Thomas Mann and the Bildungsroman. The two new works are shown alongside the 1914 drypoint Kümmernis (Misery), which is the only print by Egon Schiele in a UK public collection.

The acquisition of the prints was made possible by the Art Fund, the national art fundraising charity, which has given or supported the acquisition of many important works on display in the Hunterian Art Gallery.

The prints will go on display later next year as part of a new exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery.

First published: 9 October 2015

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