Rhytmen. X Steinzeichnungen

(478x390 mm). Loose sheets housed within the publisher's portfolio, crafted from blind-stamped and black-printed cardboard. The title page and ten lithographic plates are printed on handmade paper, with this copy retaining the often missing typographic text sheet. This is copy number 56 of a total edition of 100, with the plates numbered and signed in pencil by the Artist. An excellent copy, with only some imperfections to the publisher's portfolio.

"With his second portfolio, 'Rhythmen' (Rhythms), Ludwig von Hofmann returns to the theme of the body in motion—already central to his 'Tänze' (Dances) portfolio published fourteen years earlier—to explore it further through the expressive means he had developed in the meantime. Across the ten sheets, Hofmann unfolds figurative compositions that, in their overarching structures, transcend the individual body, even while being sustained by it. Against the backdrop of Eurythmy, the body here does not serve as an instrument for a dance of subjective expression, but emerges—in keeping with the portfolio's title—as the medium of a higher rhythm that governs existence; in this way, the human body in motion is endowed with a symbolic dimension, tied to the mysterious meaning of existence. Consequently, in Hofmann's work, the human body is neither decentered nor dissolved into fragments—as is typical of Expressionism—but remains intact, comparable to the art of Hans von Marées, and is activated precisely in its anthropomorphic nature by virtue of a new metaphysical conception of the human being. This makes Hofmann, who operates as a solitary figure amidst the current of Modernism, a classical artist." (Saur, AKL - Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Vol. 74. Berlin, 2012, p. 144 ff.)