Lothar Schreyer (1886-1966) - Mutter Erde

Lothar Schreyer: Mutter Erde (1920)

Woodcut with hand-applied gouache on paper, mounted on red cardboard. A figurative composition from Schreyer's most radical Expressionist period, executed during his tenure as director of the Sturm-Bühne in Berlin and one year before his appointment to the Bauhaus.
Sheet 26.5 × 17 cm, mounted on red cardboard 31 × 31 cm.

Hand-signed and titled by the artist in pencil. In mint archival condition.

Provenance:
Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel
Galerie von Bartha, Basel
Private Collection, Basel

Lothar Schreyer (1886–1966) studied art history at Heidelberg and law at Berlin and Leipzig, completing his doctorate in 1910 on literary and artistic co-authorship. From 1911 to 1918 he worked as dramaturg and assistant director at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Between 1916 and 1928 he served as editor of Herwarth Walden's seminal Expressionist journal Der Sturm, and taught at the Sturm-Schule für Bühnenkunst und Pantomime until 1924. In 1918 he co-founded the Sturm-Bühne with Walden, directing it until 1921 and staging his own plays Kreuzigung and Kindssterben.
In 1921 Walter Gropius appointed Schreyer master and director of the Bauhaus stage workshop in Weimar, where he taught until 1923. Following the controversial reception of his production Mondspiel, Schreyer left the Bauhaus and joined the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht in Berlin. He was a founding board member of the Berlin Waldorf School in 1924 and directed the Kunstschule Der Weg until 1927. From 1928 to 1932 he served as chief editor for cultural and literary publications at the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt in Hamburg. After his conversion to Catholicism in 1933 he wrote under the pseudonym Angelus Pauper, publishing hagiographies for the Caritasverlag. He continued to paint until his death in 1966.
Mutter Erde belongs to the small body of woodcuts Schreyer produced during his Sturm-Bühne years, when his visual work was inseparable from his theatrical and typographical experiments at Der Sturm. The hand-applied gouache transforms each impression into a unique sheet within the printed series.