Ernst Rötteken, rarest prints (I)

Ernst Rötteken (I)

(1882-1945)

German painter and printmaker

(< self portrait as a young man 1902)

The colors in this print below, "Echinopsis", make a nice bridge to continue after the colorful world of Matt Underwood's prints in last posting. Today I make a start sharing some very rare and probably never before shown or published flower prints by Ernst Rötteken (1882-1945).

I have so many nice things to share and show I'm afraid it will have to be in two separate postings. The above print, probably a proof, showing all (15 !) hues used, proving Rötteken, like Matt and Kandinsky, knew too. About the Japanese colors and hues.

Rötteken was a local printmaker in the Province of Lippe, living in Detmold the  provincial capital of the once souvereign Princedom of Lippe (Westphalen) in the hills and mountains of the Teutoburger Forest, were in AD 9, fierce Germanic tribes beat and stopped the advance of the Roman Legions. Rötteken produced his prints with the philosophy that by creating woodblock prints of his flower compositions the affordability put Good and Aesthetic Art into the reach and houses of the middle classe people of Lippe. 

Judging by their popularity and numbers of (unnumbered) prints many if not every middle class house in the province Lippe region was decorated with one or more of his prints. He was a well loved and respected artist, who experienced that prints of locally unknown and exotic plants like "Kamelie" didn't sell. 

It was "Goldregen, Roter Kaktus, Osterblumen, Sonnenblumen, Apfelblüten und Enzian" the Detmolders understood and wanted. So pernickety they were that prints like "Osterblumen" (Easterflowers) were not displayed in winter.  

See for these most and well known prints by Rötteken the Linosaurus Bazaar/Shop section following “German Printmakers” and you'll find a reference to these prints. Follow the button above or this use this link.

But these very unknown and rare prints however I enjoyed and photographed at my friend Hubert in Detmold when I visited him last spring. He is the greatest expert on painter & printmaker Ernst Rötteken and was one of the initiators of an exhibition of Röttekens work some years ago in Detmold. 

These are his early prints as well as experiments with form, design and color. Like in these three different prints of "Euphorbie".

Rötteken, relying for his bread and butter on his painting and printmaking had a small, 20 pages, cataloque made and installed at the regional better art and design shops and frame makers. It is sometimes on Ebay and holds 36 of his popular prints (to be ordered) and mentions 14 more prints in preparation (but some were never executed). In 1:4 miniature.  

.................To be continued ..............


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