Customer Reviews

Adolph Menzel, 1815-1905: Between Romanticism and Impressionism

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During his lifetime which spanned most of the 19th century, Menzel was perhaps Germany's foremost realist painter and graphic artist. He illustrated both the great events of contemporary history, such as the 1848 Revolution in Berlin and the Franco-Prussian War, as well as the mundane events of daily life. This catalogue, which was published to accompany an exhibition of the artist's works (and seen in Paris, Washington, DC, and Berlin) is the most complete English-language account of the artist's life and his art. The essays are written by expert curators and art historians. The volume is profusely illustrated, and include his key works, from his graphic illustrations of Frederick the Great to his Iron Rolling Mill of the mid-1870s. The catalogue will be of interest to historians, art historians, and the general public alike.

Adolph Menzel, so celebrated in his time, so productive to the very end of his long life and so admired by his contemporaries, is remarkably little known today. He should be at least as familiar as Manet or Van Gogh.
I saw an exhibit of Menzel's work (mostly watercolors, gouaches and drawings) at the Frick in the 1980s. He has a special gift for seeing design and order within disorder. Menzel's approach to painting and drawing is his alone, his lively anthropomorphizing of objects is wonderful.
Adolph Menzel's work has probably been another casualty of the institutionalized censoring of naturalistic representation which went on for much of the twentieth century. At last, we are seeing comprehensive monographs on some of the fine artists, like Menzel, whose work has been thrust into obscurity.
This book is a fine introduction to Menzel; an interesting photo documentation, a good bio and text along with plenty of color illustrations of the artist's work.