Photograph Signed with Inscription
Beautiful photograph of Einstein signed and inscribed in the lower mount: “Frau Hede Schloss zum Andenken [in memory], A. Einstein 1930”.
Approximately 11” X 7.5 portrait with borders, (image size 6.5” X 4.5”). An elegant bust image in fine condition.
The photograph, taken in 1928, is by Johannes “John” Graudenz (1884-1942), an influential German photographer and journalist and fierce opponent of the Nazis. In 1942 he was arrested and executed on orders from Hitler for his anti-Nazi activities. Although he spent much of his career as a press photographer with his work distributed world-wide by United Press, “Graudenz was also a serious photographer. In 1924 one of his pictures was chosen as the subject for a ‘portfolio for Walter Gropius’ by six master artists from the Bauhaus. It was reinterpreted as paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and others” (Ann Nelson, Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler, p170).
Hede Schloss (1888-1981), the recipient, was a friend of the Einstein family. Together with a typed letter signed by Elsa Einstein, also to Hede Schloss, 4th February 1936, in which she speaks of a recent illness that left her “completely isolated from the outside world”.
Check Availability:
P: 212.326.8907
E: michael@manhattanrarebooks.com