Danseuse (Maria Ley)

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

c. 1905  

drypoint and roulette printed in red ink 

10 1/2 x 7 1/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

not stated 

 

 

antique-white laid with partial JWE watermark 

published 

artist 

17414 

SOLD

Pollak had two careers as a printmaker. In Austria he did a series of etchings and drypoints of ballerinas, such as this image of Austrian-American dancer Maria Ley-Piscator. Many of his prints were confiscated by the German government before he move to America, where he became known for his color aquatints. Maria Ley-Piscator was born Friederike Czada, on August 1st, 1898, in Vienna, Austria. She trained as a dancer in Paris and Berlin, and later became a choreographer and dance instructor in the United States. She co-founded the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Soical Research in Manhatten with her third husband, German theater director Erwin Piscator. She died in 1999, at the age of 101.