Otto Greiner

(1869-1916)
Web Site Name

Gäa (Gaia) [Mother Earth]

final state, 1912

etching

Otto Greiner (Leipzig 1869 - 1916 Munich)


"Gäa" ("Gaia") [Mother Earth]

etching

1912

39 x 30,5 cm (image); 57,5 x 40,1 cm (sheet)

proof impression of final state

in pencil, lower right, monogrammed O. Gr., inscribed Roma, and dated 25.3.1912

The Daulton Collection 


Vogel 93 XIX (of XIX)


This is a proof impression taken before the copper plate was steel-faced.  



Discussion:


"Gaia is the most famous and laborious etching of Otto Greiner, which required five years of work starting from the first small test plate of 1908."  G


"[T]he mindless primal mother in Greiner's etching ['Gaia'] is an illustration of the pervasive fin-de-siècle notion, succinctly expressed by August Strindberg in his novel By the Open Sea, that 'the woman is the man's root in the earth'."  Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), at pg. 85, ill. IV, 3.
The Daulton Collection owns three additional impressions of the final state (State XIX) of Greiner's "Gäa."  These include a second impression dated 25.3.1912, an impression dated 16.5.1912, and an impression from the artist's estate that is signed by his wife Nannina Greiner:

Otto Greiner

"Gäa" ("Gaia") [Mother Earth]

etching on Japan

41,4 x 35,5 cm

proof impression of final state, 1912

in pencil, lower right, monogrammed O. Gr., inscribed Roma, and dated 25.3.1912

The Daulton Collection


Vogel 93 XIX (of XIX)


This is a proof impression taken before the copper plate was steel-faced.  

Otto Greiner

"Gäa" ("Gaia") [Mother Earth]

etching

proof impression of final state, 1912

in pencil, lower right, monogrammed O. Gr., inscribed Roma, and dated 16.5.1912

Vogel 93 XIX (of XIX)

The Daulton Collection


This is a proof impression from the steel-faced plate (verstählten Platte).  See Singer catalogue raisonné.
Otto Greiner, 
"Gäa" ("Gaia") [Mother Earth], 
etching, 
1912, 
lower right in pencil signed and inscribed by the artist's wife, Nannina Greiner: "Aus dem Nachlass von Otto Greiner - Nannina Greiner" [From the Estate of Otto Greiner]
The Daulton Collection
"Greiner lived many years in Rome, occupying the studio on Via Claudia near the Colosseum that Max Klinger had left him. At the outbreak of the world war, Greiner was forced to leave Italy and died in Munich in 1917. Some proofs of his unsigned engravings were then authenticated by his widow Nannina who returned to Rome after the end of the war."  G.
Contact:
Jack Daulton
The Daulton Collection
Los Altos Hills, California
info@ottogreiner.com