This copper-plate etching is one of a series of sixteen etchings that illustrate the erotic creation story, Erbsunde - Original Sin c1919 in which Walther Klemm subverts the Genesis creation story to stress female desire, A series of 360 copies.
The artwork depicts various animals, including tigers and a leopard in a lush natural setting, whilst engaging in various inter-species sexual positions.
The artist Walther Klemm belongs to the 'moderns' who opposed academic rules at the beginning of the 20th century. He was born in Karlsbad and studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the University of Vienna. In 1904 he exhibited with the Vienna Secession and moved to Prague and established a studio with Carl Thiemann. Klemm and Thiemann moved to the Dachau art colony in 1908 and both joined the Berlin Secession and Deutscher Künstlerbund around 1910.
Klemm was appointed professor of graphics at the Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School in 1913 and after the Second World War aided in the reconstruction of the Weimar Art School. In 1952 he was named an honorary senator of the Weimar School of Architecture and Civil and Structural Engineering (now absorbed by the Bauhaus University, Weimar). He died in 1957 in Weimar.
Several of his prints today are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York collection.
Klemm never married or had children, but some of his artwork suggests that he had a lively interest in the sexual aspect of the world. Alongside his publicly-acceptable work he was drawing scenes of debauchery well into his fifties.
Signed in pencil Walther Klemm. Slight foxing to the etching.
Recently reframed and remounted using Art Glass.
Framed size width 21” / 53cm x height 27” / 69cm
Image size width 8.5” / 22cm x height 10” / 26cm
