28 - Ernst Barlach, “The Holy War”, “Victory First, Then Peace!”, “Evacuation” and “The Bethlehem Steel Company”, four lithographs from 1914/15, framed

Ernst Barlach, “The Holy War”, “Victory First, Then Peace!”, “Evacuation” and “The Bethlehem Steel Company”, four lithographs from 1914/15, framed Ernst Heinrich Barlach, 1870 Wedel - 1938 Rostock, German sculptor, medallist, writer and draughtsman, shown here: “The Holy War”, lithograph, 44 x 24.5 cm, signed in stone; “Victory First, Peace Later!”, lithograph, 35.5 x 25 cm, signed in stone; ‘Evacuation’, lithograph, 41.5 x 27.5 cm, signed in stone; ‘The Bethlehem Steel Company’, lithograph, 40.2 x 27 cm, signed in stone, all mounted in passepartouts in matching frames About the artist: Following his conscription into the Landsturm in 1915, Ernst Barlach repeatedly focused on his wartime experiences after the end of the First World War. In 1922, Paul Cassirer in Berlin published *Die Wandlungen Gottes. Sieben Holzschnitte von Ernst Barlach* (*The Transformations of God. Seven Woodcuts by Ernst Barlach*), in which *Gott Bauch* is the fifth plate. Alongside the oversized, grotesque title figure and the lyre player lamenting his suffering to the heavens, a group of figures appears on the right in the bottom-right corner, comprising portraits of Barlach himself and his friends. During the Nazi era, the artist and his works were ostracised as ‘degenerate’ on the basis of such motifs.