OTTO MUELLER (1874-1930)

Shortly after his return from the battlefields of France and Russia of World War I, where he had nearly died of pneumonia, Otto Mueller was given a professorship at the State Academie of Art and Crafts in Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland). It was there that he began to experiment with colour printing and where, a few years later, he created the Zigeuner ('Gypsy') portfolio, the culmination of his entire printed oeuvre. Based on his experiences of living amongst Roma people in Bosnia and Croatia, the portfolio consists of nine colour lithographs depicting portraits, interiors and rural scenes with figures in a Romani village. The prints are large in scale (approximately 70 x 50 cm) and most were intended to be partially handcoloured. An edition of sixty impressions respectively was printed, but only approximately twenty portfolios were completed, signed and numbered, and issued over time in a variety of portfolio covers of different design.
Mueller died of tuberculosis in 1930 aged 55. The remainder of the edition, about forty impressions of each subject, was found in the artist's estate, including the present Zigeuner-Madonna. The prints were authenticated and signed by Mueller's friend and former fellow member of the Brücke artists' group, Erich Heckel.
Otto Mueller's Zigeuner portfolio was one of the most ambitious printmaking projects of the entire Expressionist movement, and complete sets issued during the artist's lifetime are of utmost rarity. The prints, with their rich, earthy tonality and stark but graceful figures are of a lyrical, melancholic beauty.