Allegorical scene

Ludwig von Hofmann's graphic depicts two young men riding on horseback through mountainous terrain. Hofmann gave the expressive scene a symbolic meaning by juxtaposing two different figures, one showing rape and the other resignation. It shows the struggle between light and darkness. The artist willingly took up the motif of naked male bodies in nature. Several times he depicted riders on horses. Examples include oil paintings: Young Men with Horses in Mountain Landscape (in a private collection in Wiesloch) or Riders at the Sea (Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg). The graphic was made in 1920 using the woodcut technique (on a block cut along the tree grain) and printed on handmade ribbed paper. It was published in an annual folder for 1920 by the Vienna Association Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst to supplement a magazine of the same title. A preparatory pencil drawing from 1917-1920 was entitled Two Horsemen. A proof print Two Young Horsemen was shown at an exhibition in Albstadt. Ludwig von Hofmann was born in 1861 in Darmstadt and died in 1945 in Pillnitz near Dresden. He studied from 1883 to 1889 at the art academy in Dresden, at the Grand-Ducal Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe and the Académie Julian in Paris. He was strongly influenced by Pierre Cécile Puvis de Chavannes and Paul-Albert Besnard, who he met in Paris. Hofmann worked as a painter, graphic artist, illustrator and teacher. In Berlin, he belonged to the Group of Eleven and the Berlin Secession. From 1895, he designed illustrations for the magazine Pan. In 1903, he became a professor at the Grand-Ducal School of Art in Weimar promoting the work of avant-garde artists in Germany. From 1916, he worked at the Academy of Dresden, teaching monumental painting. Simultaneously he worked as an illustrator and created series of woodcuts and lithographs.

Ewa Gwiazdowska