print, etching, drypoint
portrait
etching
caricature
figuration
expressionism
portrait drawing
drypoint
Dimensions: 21 1/2 x 13 3/4 in. (54.61 x 34.93 cm) (plate)23 15/16 × 16 1/16 in. (60.8 × 40.8 cm) (sheet)
Copyright: No Copyright - United States
This is Conrad Felixmüller’s ‘The Acrobat’, an etching. It's all done in inky blacks and whites. It's got this bold woman in the foreground, staring right at us with this slight smirk. Above her, you've got an acrobat mid-air. I’m thinking Felixmüller was really playing with perspective here, the layering of figures and the crowd give this feeling of a world in motion. I can imagine him hunched over the plate, scratching away with that needle, really feeling the tension between the performer's daring and the audience’s watchful eyes. What was he thinking? Was he one of the viewers? Or was he himself the acrobat? It reminds me a bit of Beckmann, that same kind of edgy, Weimar-era vibe. It's like he's capturing a moment, not just of performance, but of a whole society on a tightrope. You can really feel the energy, the precariousness of it all. Like the whole world is a stage, and we're all just trying not to fall.
Comments
Conrad Felixmüller came to prominence in Germany in the late 1910s when the emotional intensity of Expressionism began to give way to a more objective vision of modern life. The Acrobat depicts a female trapeze artist who poses for the artist while a clown steals her spot on the trapeze and swings over her head, much to the delight of the crowd behind them. Felixmüller seemed drawn to the circus, a separate realm where the bizarre and unusual were commonplace. Indeed, this topsy-turvy world seemed an apt metaphor for the chaotic conditions that wracked German society in the wake of World War I.
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