74 - Bauhaus - Erich Glas. Death Rides Through Flanders. Five colored woodcuts. Circa 1919. 25 × 16 cm (31 × 21 cm). Signed, monogrammed on the block.

Bauhaus - Erich Glas. Death Rides Through Flanders. Five colored woodcuts. Circa 1919. 25 × 16 cm (31 × 21 cm). Signed, monogrammed on the block. Auction start time: approx. 12:42 p.m. (schedule subject to change) Unnumbered artist’s or proof copy. - Includes a sixth woodcut as the title page, also colored. - The woodcuts are mounted on thin Japanese paper, all in green construction paper passe-partouts. - Loose in a half-leather folder with a gold-embossed title on the spine (Otto Dorfner). - “The illustrations were likely inspired by a ‘Vlaamse (Flemish) Dodendans’ published in Dutch in 1916: Elsa Laura von Wolzogen published it in German translation in 1917 and set it to music based on a 15th-century Rhineland nun’s dance song [...] The original title of the ‘Vlaamse Dodendans’ and the depiction of marauding Landsknechts allude to the atrocities committed by German soldiers against Belgian civilians at the outbreak of war in 1914; some of the illustrations also allude to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation.” (Aescht/Ernsting, p. 311). - Insert: Uncolored print of the first woodcut. - After his military service, Erich Glas (1897–1973) first studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under F. H. Ehmcke before coming to the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919, where he took Johannes Itten’s preparatory course and was accepted into the printmaking workshop led by Walter Klemm. In 1921, he became a member of the artists’ group “Das junge Rheinland.” Netzwerk Dorfner Catalog 2014, Cat. No. 47 (this copy). - Aescht/Ernsting 94.1-6. - 37.0 × 27.0 cm. (portfolio). - Portfolio hinges brittle.