Max Kaus (1891-1977) - Jung und alt

Original signed woodcut by Max Kaus, “Young and Old” (Doppenprofil)

Excellent woodcut by Max Kaus,

Sheet size approx. 21.6 x 15.8 cm

Overall sheet size approx. 30 x 24 cm

Original signature by the artist

Max Kaus (1891 - 1977)

The painter and graphic artist Max Kaus always reflects what he sees. His pictures are “architectural” in composition, their themes are “constructed.” They come across as a harmoniously organized whole. Form and color, spirit and technique merge with one another.

Kaus develops his artistic development under the influence of Expressionism. This is especially evident through close relations with the Brücke artists, above all with E. Heckel. He met him, alongside M. Beckmann or O. Herbig, during World War I in the shared service. After the war, Kaus undertakes study trips to Paris and to Switzerland.

Kaus was already an early member of the Berlin Secession and the German Artists’ Federation. In 1926 he becomes a teacher at the Master School in Charlottenburg and from 1937 to 1939 he teaches at the United State Schools. He stops when he is forced to become a member of the NSDAP. Since 1945 he has been a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (West) and its deputy director under K. Hofer. Even before 1945, exhibitions in the galleries P. Cassirer or Nierendorf underline the progressive character of his work. Since the early 1950s, Kaus succeeds in breaking the boundaries of pure figuration and opening himself to the tendencies of abstraction. The naked human figure repeatedly becomes a subject alongside dissected architecture and landscape. In this way, Kaus creates a distinctive style of interpreting the abstraction tendencies of the 1950s, which makes him stand out as a leading painter within German postwar modernism after 1945.

Represented, among others, in:
- National Gallery, Berlin
- Brücke Museum, Berlin
- Buchheim Museum, Bernried
- The Detroit Institute of Arts
- Sprengel Museum, Hanover
- Altonaer Museum, Hamburg