Franz Doll (1899-1982), A Forest Clearing, etching, 1932

Product Description

Franz Doll (1899-1982)

A Forest Clearing, 1932

Etching and drypoint on cream wove paper

Sheet: 300mm x 429mm; plate: 200mm x 245mm

Signed and inscribed in pencil below plate mark: Im Grϋntal and Franz Doll

Signed and dated in the plate: F Doll 32

Unmounted. Top edge untrimmed. Light cockling to top edge.

Franz Doll was at the heart of the artistic community in his native Munich at a time when Munich was a centre of creativity and innovation, whose influence extended throughout  Europe.

After early study at Munich’s Kunstgerwerbeschule, he trained at the Munich Art Academy under Hugo von Habermann and Carl Johann Becker-Gundahl, winning the Munich City  Art Prize, the Albrecht Durer Prize and Goethe Medal. In 1930, Franz Doll became a member of the Mϋnchener Neue Secession, established to provide a new direction for the visual arts. There he joined artists, including Paul Klee and Alexei Jawlensky, several of whom had been founder members of the Munich-based Blaue Reiter group. In 1938 he followed in Klee’s footsteps, becoming Professor at the Kunstacademie, Dϋsseldorf.

Franz Doll was a painter of richly-worked, almost symbolist landscapes and genre scenes. His graphic art is, by contrast, sharply observed and executed. The linear precision of his portraits especially shows clear influence of the New Objectivity movement, with which he was also associated. Both the Neue Secession and New Objectivity were suppressed under National Socialism following the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933.