Market at Datschitz (Tcheco-Slovakian)

Max Pollak

"Market at Datschitz (Tcheco-Slovakian)", is an intaglio, an etching with roulette and color aquatint, printed a la poupée, done around 1907. The platemark measures 4-7-8 x 10-3/16 inches. This impression is pencil signed and titled by the artist at the bottom margin and is pencil annotated "Only Print" in lower margin. It is stamped on the lower left corner with the red "FPC" (Friedl Pollak Collection) stamp on the recto. This impression was printed by the artist on a sheet of heavy, antique-white wove paper that measures 14-1/8 x 18". Our inventory number for this impression is 22544.

This unique, early 20th century intaglio by printmaker Max Pollak (1886-1970) is available from the gallery for $450.00.

Contact the gallery with any condition or other questions. Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law.

Datschitz is the German spelling of Dacice, a town in the Southern Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, and is part of the historical land of Moravia. It is the home of sugar cube inventor Jakob Kristof Rad and has a population of around 7200 people.

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

Pollak shows the square during market day with the monument to the martyred St. John of Nepomuk in the left half of the plate, complete with Nepomuk's biretta and a halo of stars. Vendors have their wagons full of goods as shoppers wander, checking out the products. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument zone.

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.

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 and paintings were confiscated by the Nazis, who considered them "decadent" because he was Jewish. This was the only proof impression printed from this plate.