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Paris: National Holiday by Max Pollak

Paris: National Holiday by Max Pollak

Paris: National Holiday

Max Pollak

Title

Paris: National Holiday

 
Artist

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)
Year
1925  
Technique
drypoint and color aquatint 
Image Size
14 1/8 x 12" platemark 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
20/50; approximately 25 printed 
Annotations
pencil titled, in lower left; bears the red FPC collector's stamp in the lower left; from the collection of Friedl Pollak; also inscribed "printed a. 25" in lower left corner of the paper 
Reference
Triton Museum of Art, Max Pollak in Retrospect, cat. no. 26, illustrated page [10]; No. 91 on the checklist of the exhibition of Pollak's work at the University of California, 1949 
Paper
antique-white laid 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
22565 
Price
SOLD
Description

Printmaker Max Pollak was born in Prague, Czechoslavakia and raised in Vienna and, in 1902, at sixteen years of age he entered the Vienna Academy of Art. He studied painting and printmaking under William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. In 1912, he traveled to Italy, France, Holland and the Holy Land to study and paint, creating prints in all regions, a kind of visual "diary" of his life.

This image, done in Paris in 1925, is a glimpse of Paris during one of its National Holidays, perhaps Bastille Day. A band plays in the decorated bandstand while Parisians dance in the street below. Pollak uses a quick drypoint line to suggest the figures and the buildings in the background. This is accented with numerous colorful aquatinted balloons that stretch across the composition.

Shortly after this the Pollaks moved to the United States, where he continued this "diary" throughout the US and Latin America.