Otto Greiner (Leipzig 1869 - 1916 Munich)
"Gäa" ("Gaia") [Mother Earth]
etching
1912
39 x 30,5 cm (image); 57,5 x 40,1 cm (sheet0
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.
The Daulton Collection owns four impressions of the final state (State XIX) of Greiner's "Gäa." For the other impressions, see www.ottogreiner.com
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.
