Image: Kirchner Museum Davos
Kirchner Museum Davos has added 73 woodblocks by Philipp Bauknecht to its collection this year. The group entered the museum through a gift from Gioia Smid, from the estate of the J. P. Smid collection in Amsterdam.
The woodblocks offer researchers access to Bauknecht’s artistic workshop and record decisions made during the development of images. Bauknecht worked extensively in woodcut following his move to Davos in 1910 due to illness.
His woodcuts include Christian motifs and symbolically charged compositions addressing illness and death, sometimes with an ironic view of the society around him. He also developed his visual language in rural scenes, portraits and depictions of animals.
A characteristic of Bauknecht’s woodcut practice is the interplay of solid black areas and animated structures carved from the material.
