Karl Friedrich Zähringer (1886–1923) - Hirte mit Kühen

Karl Friedrich Zähringer (1886–1923).

"Hirte mit Kühen", 1918.

Signed and dated in the plate.
Embossed "Verein für Originalradierung Karlsruhe" stamp.
This is the official historical edition issued by the Karlsruhe printmakers' association, published around 1920.
Dimensions: 57.5 x 45.5 cm.
The number of copies is unknown (generally ranging between 100 and 150 copies produced by the Association).

We have kept it in very good condition. Please see the photographs.

The young Zähringer passed away in 1923 at the early age of 37. Later, during the National Socialist regime in 1937, several of his Expressionist works were posthumously confiscated as part of the Nazi "Degenerate Art" (*Entartete Kunst*) campaign.

Zähringer sought neither idealized beauty nor academic proportion, but rather raw emotional power. Characterized by rough, angular lines, stark black-and-white contrasts, and sharp, energetic strokes, his figures—both faces and bodies—undergo slight distortion to emphasize moods such as melancholy, isolation, or the burden of physical labor. Unlike other urban Expressionists who depicted nightlife or urban decadence, Zähringer’s isolation in settings such as Davos (Switzerland) and Murg (Baden) steered his subject matter toward the atavistic and the rural.