82.71 Good Friday (Karfeitag)

1919

Etching, sheet: 16 x 12 1/2" (40.6 x 30.8 cm); composition: 9 1/8 x 6 7/8" (23.3 x 17.3 cm)

Signed, ll: C. Mense, also signed in stone, lr: C Mense

Print from Die Schaffenden portfolio, 1 Jr., 4. Mappe, Die Schaffenden stamp in lower left corner

Provenance: Hauswedell Auction, Hamburg, May 1959

After World War I, Mense concentrated increasingly on images taken from Catholic ritual. As one critic stated, Mense allowed his Baroque sense of spiritual fantasy to prevail. His inspiration came from his memory of the art of the 15^th-century “Primitives” of the Cologne school, as well as his study of medieval French manuscripts. Stylistically, this work and its pendant, Andacht (82.74), also reveal Mense’s debt to Robert Delaunay’s conception of prismatic forms and simultaneity.

The towering arches of a Gothic church visible in the background, for example, directly mirror Delaunay’s approach to his favorite motif, the Eiffel Tower. A delightful variety of vertically stylized images, all evocative of the theme of Good Friday, intersect arbitrarily, without regard to rule of realistic perspective or relative space. The effect, then, is poetic, with a conscious allusion to the mystical mood of medieval manuscripts.

In the poetic language of the critics of the day, Hugo Zehder described Manse’s spiritual intentions: “Certainly Mense is contemplative when he paints or draws. He takes great pleasure in small things, and when it concerns relations which lead directly to God, he must compose ecstatically.”

Here Mense’s adaptation of Futurist-inspired fragmentation is even more readily apparent than in the work’s pendant, Karfreitag (82.71). Bits of religious images, including the traditional Schmerzensmann (Man of Sorrows) of early German painting, float to the center of faceted surfaces, evoking a poetic image of the votive ritual.