Franz von Stuck (1863-1928)
Kunstausstellung Christus (Christ Art Exhbition)
color lithograph (or autotype) exhibition poster (printed by Meisenbach Riffarth & Co., Berlin)
circa 1896
67,7 x 47,9 cm (26 9/16 x 18 13/16 in.)
signed in the plate F. Stuck
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Rare poster for a small, but visionary, art exhibition organized by Theodor Bierck, an art collector and art dealer who was also consul to the Swedish-Norwegian court. The exhibition had as its goal the depiction of Christ as entirely human. It consisted of only nine paintings, one by each of nine artists who were well-known and successful in the contemporary German art scene, including Franz Stuck, Hans Thoma, and Gabriel Max, among others. The exhibition opened on May 12 1896, in Berlin's former Herrenhaus building (the Prussian House of Lords building, the old Reichstag building, formerly the residence of the Mendelssohn family, demolished 1898). The exhibition was widely attended and reviewed, especially in the German Christian press, and, after its run in Berlin, traveled throughout Germany. The present poster apparently advertised the exhibition's showing at the Boersen-Anbau in Hamburg. References: Christopher Koenig, "Christ, Art and the Nation: The Berlin 'Christ Exhibition' of 1896 and the Search for Protestant Identity in Wilhelminian Germany," in Iconoclasm and Iconoclash: Struggle for Religious Identity, eds. Willem van Asselt, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 409-433. "Die Biercksche Christus-Ausstellung," in Die Kunst fuer Alle, XIII, 20, July 15, 1898, pp. 505 et seq., reproducing all nine of the paintings.
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