About This Artwork

Ernst Barlach
German, 1870-1938

Desperate Discussion, 1916

Charcoal, with stumping and erasing, with graphite borders on cream wove paper
337 x 262 mm
Signed recto, lower right, in graphite: "E Barlach"
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, 1998.710

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Wellesley Mass., Wellesley College, 1956.

Boston, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, "20th Century Germanic Art from Private Collections in Greater Boston," March 23–May 1, 1961, as Standing Man with Monkey.

New York, Solomon Guggenheim Museum, "20th Century Drawings," November 6, 1962–January 5, 1963, cat. 5, pl. 18, as Seated Man with Monkey; traveled to Minneapolis, Minn., University Gallery, University of Minnesota, February 3–March 15, 1964, and Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, April 6–May 24, 1964.

Waltham, Mass., Dreitzer Gallery, Brandeis University, "50 Drawings by 50 Modern Masters," February 22–April 5,1970.

Cambridge, Mass. Busch Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, "Ernst Barlach" 1870–1938, December 16, 1970–February 13, 1971, cat. 10.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Drawn to Form: Modern Drawings," June 11-September 7, 1999.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection," June 3–July 30, 2006, p. 182, cat. 133 (ill.).

Publication History

Kurt Sternelle and Gerhard Schack, Stiftung Hermann F. Reemstsma (Hamburg, 1966), p. 121, under no. 78.

Friedrich Schult, Ernst Barlach Werkkatalog der Zeichnungen (Hamburg, 1971), no.1175, as Verzweifelter Diskurs (Desperate Discussion) (ill.).

Ownership History

Sold by the Allan Frumkin Gallery, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, 1956 [collector notes]; given to the Art Institute, 1998.