Moses, 1919

About the Work

Schmidt-Rottluff had already been known to adapt the forms of the printing blocks to his compositions in earlier years. For the woodcuts “Mother” and “Moses”, he now sawed the block to match the exact outline of the head. The wooden block accordingly prints in the manner of a stamp: the print and the block are positive and negative forms of the same face – or more precisely the same mask. Formally, however, Moses bears a strong resemblance to “Reddish Brown Head with Lowered Eyes” (private collection) carved by the artist in Lithuania in 1918.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.