Market at Teltsch, Moravia

Max Pollak

Done in 1907, Max Pollak was 21 years old when he did this etching and aquatint, colored a la poupée, the intaglio combinations he would use for his whole artistic life.

Pollak shows a market in the Town Square with the baroque houses in the background. Tents are set up by some of the vendors, while others shelter from the sun under the trees. Shoppers wander, checking out the products.

Max Pollak was born in Czechoslavakia and raised in Vienna, Austria. A printmaker with a long and productive career, his intaglio subjects included genre, land and cityscapes, and portraits from throughout Europe, the Holy Land, the United States, and Latin America.

Teltsch is a town in the Jihlava District in the Vysoina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 5,300 inhabitants. The town is well known for its historic centre, which is protected by law as an urban monument reservation and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Moravia was part of Bohemia and then incorporated into Czechoslavakia in 1918 and then the Czech Republic in 1949. It was included as the Czech Socialist Republic when it was administratively created in 1968 within federal Czechoslovakia and remained part of the Czech Republic when the latter became an independent nation in 1993.

Many of Pollak's European prints were confiscated by the Nazis, who considered them "decadent" because he was Jewish. There were only proof impressions printed from this plate.