Bridge on the River Isonzo (Italy)

Max Pollak

Max Pollak was born in Czechoslavakia and raised in Vienna, Austria. A printmaker with a long, productive career his intaglios, which included genre, land and cityscapes, and portraits from throughout Europe, the Holy Land, the United States and Latin America.

As a young man Pollak was an appointed painter for the Austrian Army where he documented and created several images depicting the scars created by war.

This structure is a railway bridge over the Isonzo (now Soca) River--which runs through Italy and present-day Slovenia--which was badly damaged in one of the twelve Battles of the Isonzo that took place between 1915 and 1917 during World War I.

Many of Pollak's prints were destroyed twenty years later by the Nazis, who considered them "decadant" because he was Jewish. There were only about four impressions printed from this plate.