Gerhard Marcks was one of the first masters at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, where he was appointed artistic director of the ceramics workshop in 1919. While he was teaching in ceramics, Marcks also made sculptures and prints, including these two woodcuts of predatory cats in urban environments – thinly veiled critiques of political corruption and moral bankruptcy in the Weimar Republic. Marcks left the Bauhaus in 1924 and after holding senior teaching positions in the city of Halle was banned from tertiary education by the National Socialists in 1933. His art was classed as ‘degenerate’ in 1937.