Jakob van Hoddis (recto); Untitled (Sketch of Buildings (verso)
Ludwig Meidner
1909–1919
- Medium
- Pen and brush and black ink, over graphite (recto), and graphite and charcoal (verso), on ivory wove paper
- Dimensions
- 45.9 × 41.6 cm (18 1/8 × 16 7/16 in.)
- Genre
- pen and ink drawings
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)graphiteinkpen and ink drawingsprints and drawingpaper (fiber product)
About
Meidner depicted the Expressionist poet Jakob van Hoddis (Hans Davidsohn, 1887-1942) several times. He was one of Meidner' s best friends, and the two of them would frequently take evening walks together through the streets of Berlin. Perhaps the most influential of the Expressionist literati, van Hoddis is often credited with writing the first truly Expressionist poem, his Weltende (End of the World), which consummates the apocalyptic hopes and fears of his generation. In 1914, van Hoddis became mentally ill and was put in an institution, from which he would later be taken by the Nazis and killed.
