Reiner Schwarz, The Lady with the Dog, 1971, Lithograph

Reiner Schwarz (*1940 Hirschberg), The Lady with the Dog, 1971. Lithograph, 33 cm x 26 (image), 59 cm x 42 cm (sheet size), signed in pencil at lower right "R.[ein] Schwarz", dated "[19]71", identified as copy no. 77/100 and inscribed in the middle "Die Dame mit dem Hündchen".
- in excellent condition




- Like the master, so the dog -


Like the master, so the dog can be applied here to the Grande Dame and her four-legged friend. The formation of the physiognomies is analogous up to the coloring, whereby the physical appearance - as usual for Reiner Schwarz - is formed by bulging parts. This clashes with the lady's pretentious beauty. Nevertheless, she has a dignity that corresponds to the dog's face, which is revealed as beauty in the blossoms that connect the two creatures.






About the artist


After being expelled from Hirschberg in Silesia, Reiner Schwarz spent his youth in Hannover. In 1960 he began studying at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Mac Zimmermann and produced his first lithographs. In 1962 he made study trips to Florence and Venice, and in 1965 to Rome. He was particularly fascinated by Italian art, Sienese painting, and Mannerism. His first solo exhibition at the Galerie Schnoor in Bremen in 1964 was the beginning of more than 150 exhibitions in Germany and abroad.
In 1974 Reiner Schwarz established a print studio in Berlin, where he perfected the technique of lithography, using up to 17 colors on various tone papers. In 1987, his artistic encounter with Rolf Münzer and Peter Schnürpel at the Kätelhön print studio inspired him to explore the world of "abandoned and lonely" everyday objects as melancholy traces of memory instead of people. Initially, he used large-format wrapping paper from the GDR. In 1990 Schwarz became a member of the Künstlersonderbund in Germany.
Galerie Brusberg, which represented the artist for more than 20 years, published a catalogue raisonné of Reiner Schwarz's lithographs in 1984.

"He does not want to be just a draughtsman, but an interpreter, a reinterpreter, a metaphorist who creates mutants and thus visualizes the invisible, the known and the seemingly banal that is about to be transformed into eternity; the brief moment of an all too fleeting present, nature next to nature, reality next to reality. It is therefore a subversive realism that questions our everyday thinking, that refuses to grasp things quickly by means of exaggerated precision, that thwarts cognition, denatures the world and melts it into a pictorial puzzle [...]".
Edwin Kratschmer.