The kiss
(Der Kuss)
(1898)
from Pan, vol. 4, no. 2, July-Sep 1898
Medium
colour woodcut on Japanese paper
Measurements
27.2 × 21.6 cm (image and block) 37.1 × 27.6 cm (sheet)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Ruth Margaret Frances Houghton Bequest, 2020
Gallery location
Mid 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Peter Behrens was a German architect, painter and designer who had a lasting impact on twentieth-century architecture and design. In the 1890s, when he made The kiss, Behrens was working as a painter and designer in the Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) style. His colour woodcut is a key image of the style and was published in the influential German arts magazine Jugend (Youth), which promoted the new movement. The kissing figures are highly stylised and have been reduced to a flat pattern, their entwining tresses of hair rendered in the signature ‘whiplash’ tendrils of Art Nouveau.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Munich, Germany
Edition
edition of 1100
Printing/Publishing
printed by Dr. C. Wolf & Sohn, Munich
published by Genossenschaft Pan GmbH, Berlin
Inscription
printed in brown ink (in image) l.c.: PB (monogram)
printed in ink l.l.: PETER BEHRENS, SECHSFARBIGER ORIGINALHOLZSCHNITT PAN IV2.
Accession Number
2020.622
Departments
International Prints / International Prints and Drawings