Olmutz - Rollenfallen verkaufen, Slovaken

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

1917  

graphite drawing 

15 1/4 x 6 5/8" image size 

pencil, lower right 

 

pencil titled and dated "Juni 1915" in lower left; additional titling on verso reads "Rollenfallen Slovaken" in pencil; bears the red Friedl Pollak Collection stamp as well as the "Made in Austria" stamp on the verso 

 

toothy cream wove 

 

 

23690 

$400.00 

Olmutz is the German word for Olomouc, a city in the Czech Republic, then known as Czechoslovakia. When Max Pollak drew this portrait of a Slovakian boy and his wares, he was conscripted into the Austrian Army as a war artist. He may have been stationed in the Olomouc region, which was undergoing expansion through the annexation of smaller municipalities, ultimately to become more German and Christian - and less Jewish. This may be a portrait of a young man whose family has been dispossessed, and he has been burdened with the job of supporting himself through selling wares. He holds a collection of cast off industrial parts, and he wears clothes and boots that are far too large for his small frame.