Peasant Girls (Moravia)

Max Pollak

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.

This early color intaglio depicts three Southern Moravian peasant girls, dressed in traditional local costume, gathered at the water. Their dresses are billowing, covered with a long apron, and they wear scarves. In the background is a thick wall with a door that probably leads to the village.

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.