Paris, Fruit Shop

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

c. 1926  

softground etching & color aquatint 

15 x 10" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

unnumbered; edition 50 

pencil titled, in lower left; also titled in lower left corner of the paper and inscribed "printed a 50"; bears the red FPC collector's stamp in the lower left; from the collection of Friedl Pollak 

No. 1 on the checklist of titles included in Pollak's exhibition at the University of California, April 3 - May 15, 1949 

ivory laid with Van Gelder Zonen watermark in text and an elaborate crown/shield watermark 

published 

artist 

22546 

$500.00 

A small fruit stand is the facade of a collection of topsy-turvy apartments, sandwiched between the towering and formidable concrete sides of more modern structures - symbols of industrial progress, perhaps, in Max Pollak’s image of a Parisian street.

Pollak frequently trained his artistic eye on architecture of all kinds. Whether it be a depiction of illustrious Baroque chateaus or the ramshackle structures of backwater towns, it appears that recording the places where civilization played out its everyday activities remained a constant source of inspiration.

Here, the viewer might be able to imagine the sound of neighborly conversation; the occasional rumbling engine of an automobile; the bustle of pedestrians heading to and from work, pausing on their way to inspect the day’s offerings at the epicerie fruitarie.