Symbolic scene

Max Klinger's composition depicts an early spring suburban landscape with figural groups. In the foreground, a couple in love is sitting on the grass by a stream. Klinger depicted the harmony between them by referring to the traditional pattern of making music together. The man is playing the guitar. The woman, facing him, is listening to him or singing. On the left, on a slope on which a villa surrounded by trees rises, two children are plucking spring flowers under the supervision of their mother. On the right, behind the trunk of one row of poplars, an older man is standing and gazing melancholically into the distance. The groups of figures determine the symbolic meaning of the work. They embody the three stages of human life: childhood, youth and old age. Their occupations speak of the quick passing, impermanence and futility of human life. The graphic was made around 1890 using the etching and aquatint technique and reflected on engraving paper glued onto cardboard. Max Klinger was born in 1857 in Leipzig and died in 1920 in Großjena. He studied from 1874, briefly at the Großgerzoglich-Badische Kunstschule (Grand-Ducal Baden School of Art) in Karlsruhe and then at the Berlin Academy of Art. Between 1879 and 1916, he created fourteen graphic cycles. He spent much time undertaking study trips in Belgium, France, Italy, Greece and the Pyrenees. He worked as a painter, graphic artist and sculptor. His symbolist works, whose Expressionist features are also visible, greatly influenced other artists, including Otto Greiner and especially Alfred Kubin. Klinger's monument to Ludwig van Beethoven completed in 1902 is considered his most important sculptural work. The artist was active in the life of the artistic community. He initiated the purchase and reconstruction of the Villa Romana in Florence into a house of creative work, serving numerous German scholarship holders.

Ewa Gwiazdowska