Umbra Vitae
Object number2017.0071
TitleUmbra Vitae
Creator Georg Heym, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
DescriptionBoek met 47 houtsneden van E.L. Kirchner.
De tweede editie van Umbra Vitae werd na de dood van Heym met 47 houtsneden van Ernst Ludwig Kirchner geïllustreerd.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner illustrated the 1924 reprint of Umbra Vitae (Shadow of life), a posthumus collection of Georg Heym's Expressionist poems that was first published in 1912, the year of the poet's premature death at age 24, by drowning. Kirchner, who owned a copy of the earlier edition and knew the poems very well, designed all of the elements himself, including the 46 woodcuts throughout the book; the color woodcuts on the cover, the frontispiece and the front and back endpapers; and the bold grotesque typography (fette Groteskletter). The illustrations, printed in a blacklike brown, serve as visual correlatives to Heym's hauntingly poetic images of life's shadow. The dark side of life -death, war, madness, alienation, loneliness and anxiety- was a recurrent theme in Heym's poetry.
The book's forty-three poems had been compiled by Heym's friends from the Expressionist literary group Der Neue Club in Berlin. Ernst Rowohlt in Leipzig published the first edition. Editor Hans Mardersteig, on behalf of publishing house Kurt Wolff in Munich, invited Kirchner to illustrate the reprint. The book is titled after one of Heym's poems. (publication excerpt from Iris Schmeisser, German Expressionist Digital Archive Project, German Expressionism: Works from the MOMA Collection 2011)
De tweede editie van Umbra Vitae werd na de dood van Heym met 47 houtsneden van Ernst Ludwig Kirchner geïllustreerd.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner illustrated the 1924 reprint of Umbra Vitae (Shadow of life), a posthumus collection of Georg Heym's Expressionist poems that was first published in 1912, the year of the poet's premature death at age 24, by drowning. Kirchner, who owned a copy of the earlier edition and knew the poems very well, designed all of the elements himself, including the 46 woodcuts throughout the book; the color woodcuts on the cover, the frontispiece and the front and back endpapers; and the bold grotesque typography (fette Groteskletter). The illustrations, printed in a blacklike brown, serve as visual correlatives to Heym's hauntingly poetic images of life's shadow. The dark side of life -death, war, madness, alienation, loneliness and anxiety- was a recurrent theme in Heym's poetry.
The book's forty-three poems had been compiled by Heym's friends from the Expressionist literary group Der Neue Club in Berlin. Ernst Rowohlt in Leipzig published the first edition. Editor Hans Mardersteig, on behalf of publishing house Kurt Wolff in Munich, invited Kirchner to illustrate the reprint. The book is titled after one of Heym's poems. (publication excerpt from Iris Schmeisser, German Expressionist Digital Archive Project, German Expressionism: Works from the MOMA Collection 2011)
Production date 1924
Production period20e eeuw
Object nameboeken, houtsneden
Object categorygrafische vormgeving
Techniquedrukken
Dimensions
- hoogte: 24.00 cm
breedte: 16.50 cm
dikte: 1.50 cm
Credit lineverworven met gelden van BankGiro Loterij