(fall from Paradise)

Walther Klemm

From a 1926 portfolio of prints attached to a special issue of the journal "Archive of Book Design and Applied Art." Portfolio contained twelve lithographs, etchings and woodcuts by twelve German artists of the period. All prints are signed by the artists and the edition was 250.

A dynamic, powerful image, this untitled woodcut of the biblical scene of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace retains the minimalistic sensibilities of German Expressionism. The bodies of Abrahamic God’s first humans plunge headfirst into a dark realm, flanked by bats as large as themselves, whose wolf-like expressions are nearly gleeful.

Walther Klemm’s body of work is a collection of contradictions, one in which Klemm dwells on the dark and the light with equal measure. As easily as he captures the horrors of the human condition in both realistic and surreal imagery, he can portray the serenity of ducks in a still pond or children at play on a snowy slope.