Les Illuminations
V. Marine

12. Gerhard Marcks (1889–1981)
Milane [Kites] (1955)

Description	:	Marcks, who taught at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, came to wood-engraving and lithography through his other principal achievements in sculpture. Much of his early work was looted by the Nazis or destroyed when his studio was bombed during the war, although he received many honours later in life. Milane, a swirling impression of the ocean studded with seabirds, was a gift to Pears in 1962 from the artist himself, who also made a present of another three woodcuts in due course. One of these was a brief poem by Hölderlin, ‘Die Linien des Lebens’, which Britten set in 1958 as the last of his Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente. Woodcut print on Japanese paper, 13/50: 36.8 x 52.2 cm. Mounted, framed, glazed: 53.3 x 60 cm. [GB-ALb 5–9700134]
Copyright	:	Reproduced by kind permission of the Gerhard-Marcks-Stiftung, Bremen.