Otto Greiner

Otto Greiner was one of the foremost representatives of German Symbolism. After his apprenticeship as a lithographer at the Bach’sche Kunstanstalt in Leipzig he studied from 1888 to 1891 at the Kunstakademie in Munich under Alexander Liezen-Mayer. Adolph Menzel recognised Greiner’s outstanding talent as a draughtsman as early as 1890. The following year Greiner undertook a study tour to Italy and when in Rome met Max Klinger, who was to exert a considerable influence on him. Having finally moved to Rome in 1898, Greiner took over Klinger’s studio there. In 1913 the artist was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca, but following Italy’s entry into the First World War in 1915 he returned with his Italian-born wife Nannina Duranti to Germany, where he died a year later of pneumonia.

The present portrait shows Marianne Brockhaus, the great-granddaughter of Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, the founder of the Leipzig publishing house. Marianne Brockhaus was an art and book collector and a patron of the arts in Leipzig. She frequented her brother Max’s salon and was friends, among others, with the architect Fritz Schumacher and the director of the Grassimuseum, Richard Graul. A painter herself, she was in contact with Paula Modersohn-Becker. Otto Greiner produced an ex libris for Marianne as well as the present lithograph, which is not only an impressive, lifelike and sensitive portrait, but also of outstanding visual conciseness in its overall design. The form as a whole is closed; beneath the naturalistically portrayed head the sweeping skirt with its uniform hatching has a flat, ornamental quality reminiscent of Klimt and Art Nouveau. A very fine, even impression on the full sheet, with the full deckle edge on the right. Minor ageing, otherwise of impeccable beauty and in pristine condition. Very rare.

12.000 €