Moriz Melzer
Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg)1919

Not on view

Woodcut or woodblock print of an angular cityscape with a tall church spire, geometric rooftops, and sweeping pale yellow diagonal forms against a dark midnight-blue sky with a yellow crescent moon

Artist or Maker: Moriz Melzer
Title: Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg)
Place Made: Germany
Date Made: 1919
Medium: Monotype and oil on paper
Dimensions: Image and sheet: 51 1/8 x 35 in. (129.86 x 88.9 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA, in honor of the museum's 40th anniversary
Accession Number: M.2006.18
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
Curatorial Notes: Moriz Melzer was a prolific graphic artist who contributed prints to many of the most important Expressionist periodicals, including Die Aktion (Action), Der Sturm (The Storm), and Die schöne Rarität (The Beautiful Rarity). He participated in the political fervor that followed World War I in Germany as a member of the November Group and Working Council for Art. These radical artists’ groups revived the Gothic cathedral as a symbol of what leading Expressionist playwright Ernst Toller called the “cathedral of humanity” (Menschheitskathedrale)—the metaphorical spiritual center of humankind’s aspirations for a better social order.

In Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg), Melzer portrays one such church, surrounded by rooftops and mountains rendered as an explosion of crystalline forms. This image is typical of many of the visionary second-generation Expressionists who celebrated architecture as a supreme art form that encompassed all other media. Melzer’s drawing of a thunderstorm conveys a pantheistic reverence for nature and an absorption with the sublime. LACMA’s impression is among his very finest, with passages of woodcut striations rendered in resonant colors and intensified by hand-painted additions in oil. Its expansive scale is made possible by combining four large sheets. As a monotype, this impression is unique; the only other known variant is a reverse of this image with less intense color, making it likely a counterproof derived from this primary image.

Timothy Benson

2017
Selected Bibliography: Benson, Timothy O. and Andrea Gyorody. A New Generation of Creators: Selections from The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.
Benson, Timothy O. Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.
Copyright: © Moriz Melzer Estate

Moriz Melzer
Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg)1919

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Moriz Melzer
Title: Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg)
Place Made: Germany
Date Made: 1919
Medium: Monotype and oil on paper
Dimensions: Image and sheet: 51 1/8 x 35 in. (129.86 x 88.9 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA, in honor of the museum's 40th anniversary
Accession Number: M.2006.18
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
Curatorial Notes: Moriz Melzer was a prolific graphic artist who contributed prints to many of the most important Expressionist periodicals, including Die Aktion (Action), Der Sturm (The Storm), and Die schöne Rarität (The Beautiful Rarity). He participated in the political fervor that followed World War I in Germany as a member of the November Group and Working Council for Art. These radical artists’ groups revived the Gothic cathedral as a symbol of what leading Expressionist playwright Ernst Toller called the “cathedral of humanity” (Menschheitskathedrale)—the metaphorical spiritual center of humankind’s aspirations for a better social order.

In Lightning over Mittelberg (Gewitter über Mittelberg), Melzer portrays one such church, surrounded by rooftops and mountains rendered as an explosion of crystalline forms. This image is typical of many of the visionary second-generation Expressionists who celebrated architecture as a supreme art form that encompassed all other media. Melzer’s drawing of a thunderstorm conveys a pantheistic reverence for nature and an absorption with the sublime. LACMA’s impression is among his very finest, with passages of woodcut striations rendered in resonant colors and intensified by hand-painted additions in oil. Its expansive scale is made possible by combining four large sheets. As a monotype, this impression is unique; the only other known variant is a reverse of this image with less intense color, making it likely a counterproof derived from this primary image.

Timothy Benson

2017
Selected Bibliography: Benson, Timothy O. and Andrea Gyorody. A New Generation of Creators: Selections from The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.
Benson, Timothy O. Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.