Ernst Barlach

Hope and Despair II

1931
lithograph

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

In both his sculpture and prints, Barlach expressed the suffering and anguish of World War I (1914-18) and the difficult years that followed. The artist, whose work depicts ordinary workers, wrote: "Truly, not beauty and loveliness is our strength, our power, but rather the opposite, ugliness, daemonic passion and the grotesque genius of greatness..."

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