Small but fine sales exhibition Max Klinger from December 6, 2024

The 15 illustrations for ‘’Amor and Psyche‘’ by the Roman poet Lucius Apuleius were commissioned by the Munich publisher Theodor Stroefer in 1880. Basically everything has been said and written about Max Klinger, who is known to be buried in the vineyard in Großjena. During our second conversation with the collector and gallery owner, who is presenting four of Klinger's originals in our small café, a reference was made to Klinger's materially very comfortable origins, which are not so well known.

We are thus exhibiting 4 out of this 15 etchings. Klinger did not produce illustrations of this kind again in his lifetime. On the contrary, he wrote to his friend Dehmel on 27 April 1919, who asked him to illustrate one of his volumes of poetry: ‘The term illustration has always been an abomination to me. I've done it a few times! For the sake of the cursed money ... In and of itself, I find the locking together of letters and pictures quite nasty.’ The cursed money thing is great understatement, or, rattling is part of the trade:

Klinger was also commercially successful during his lifetime and earned a good living. It is well known that he bought and leased vineyards in Großjena. He extended and remodelled his house there, now a museum, himself. However, the fact that he was able to obtain a burial licence for his grave in the vineyard and was able to be buried outside a church or municipal cemetery borders on a miracle, which he must have helped to bring about in some way.

As surviving witnesses to the fortune of the Klingers, father and son, they still stand in stone in top locations in Leipzig. The next visit to Leipzig takes the reader to the monumental ‘Klingerhaus’, Petersstr. 48 in the city centre. Heinrich Louis Klinger (1816-1896) acquired the building at Petersstrasse 48 and Schloßgasse 2 and 4 in 1858. It was here that Heinrich Louis Klinger's son, Max Klinger, was born before the house was purchased. The path then leads past Karl-Heine-Str. 2 in Plagwitz. Klinger's father had the villa built there in 1868 as a residence for the large family.

As the son of a successful Leipzig soap manufacturer, Klinger - unlike many others in his profession - had no material worries. He was also extremely successful with his works. Klinger was in demand because he artistically combined antiquity and modernity. His painting and sculpture manifested itself in an expression of classicism. He complemented this congenially with fantastic and metaphysical elements. 

Max Klinger was a man of action, which led him to Tuscany, more precisely to the capital, Florence.

Thanks to the soap manufactory he inherited from his father, Leipzig remained a fixed point of reference throughout his life, as it secured his material livelihood. He was allowed to let his gaze wander close by (Großjena between Naumburg and Freyburg) and into the distance. Paris, Vienna, Rome, everything was within striking distance. Klinger's enthusiasm for Florence as a place of metaphysical painting was awakened by his friend Arnold Böcklin, a Florentine by choice, and Karl Stauffer-Bern. This Renaissance city in particular offered numerous artistic points of reference for Klinger's work; here he was able to draw on ancient traditions and reinterpret them. 

Klinger was accordingly enthusiastic and set up an artists' house for the Deutscher Künstlerbund: in 1905, he purchased the Villa Romana for 60,000 gold lira. Based on current gold prices, this corresponds to a current equivalent value of around USD 1,600,000. In 1906, the Villa Romana Association was founded in Leipzig, to which Klinger contributed the villa. The man was definitely not poor.

If one crosses the Arno in Florence on the Ponte Vecchio and turns into the Via Romana at the Palazzo Pitti, one comes to the Porta Romana and from there to the Via Senese, which leads to the gate of the Villa Romana. The approximately 14,500 square metre large property of the famous artists' house Villa Romana is located on the right-hand pavement behind a metre-high stone wall. The Carrara marble entrance hall is adorned in the centre by a bronze bust of the poet Elsa Asenjieff, Max Klinger's partner and model.