August Sander

By descent to the present owners

Zeitgenossen: August Sander und Kunstszene der 20er Jahre im Rheinland (Göttingen, 2000), p. 216 (variant cropping)

The photograph offered here depicts Else Schuler, Tristan Rémy, Franz W. Seiwert, and Gerd Arntz, all of whom were associated with the avant-garde ‘Cologne Progressives.’ This image is included in ‘Working Types – Physical and Intellectual,’ a subcategory of images in Sander’s Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Citizens of the Twentieth Century), a monument in the history of photography. 

Although a photographer known for his straightforward documentary style, Sander’s association and friendship with this radical group of artists and writers ran deep. Sander advertised his studio in a bis z, the progressive art ‘zine founded in 1929 by Siewert, and his photographs of artists feature in both Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts and its precursor, Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Time). A catalogue for the 1926 exhibition, Neue Kunst, Alte Kunst, reproduced Sander’s portraits of the exhibiting artists, including those of Seiwert and Arntz, as well as his photographs of their art. 

No other early print of this image has appeared at auction. Sander’s home studio in Cologne was destroyed in a 1944 air raid, and surviving early prints are scarce. The image is primarily known through reproduction and through posthumous prints.