Past Exhibitions: 2003

Max Klinger's A Glove

December 20, 2003-February 29, 2004
Works on Paper Gallery

Max Klinger
German, 1857-1920
Action (Handlung), pl. 2 from 'A Glove' (Ein Handschuh), Opus VI
1878-1881
etching on off-white wove paper
Museum purchase, Gift of Helmut Stern, 1986/1.155.2

Max Klinger's ten-image set of etchings was based on a series of drawings he executed in 1878 entitled Fantasies on a lost glove; dedicated to the lady who lost it. The images follow the dreamlike reverie of a lover/artist who picks up a glove dropped by a woman at an ice-skating rink. The first two plates depict the chance encounter with the glove at the rink. Each of the following plates depicts the glove in an obsessive and fetishistic manner, full of passion, sinister threat, and triumph. Executed in 1881, the set's disjunction of images looks forward to Surrealism and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.

back to top