Paul Holz: Moor Landscape

• 1937, black reed pen on light-grey paper, 63.7 x 46.9 cm

The Moor Landscape gives an insight into the barren and lonely world of this area. Under a similar sketch he wrote: “As still as black lead lies the moor that God forgot to visit.” Only a few reeds are growing from the ground on the moor; the tree on the right looks as though it has already died. The simplicity of Paul Holz’s motifs gives them a symbolic significance; they are associated with the gods of creation, with life and death.

Paul Holz is one of the most significant illustrators of the first half of the 20th century. He is well represented with 70 pages in the Schwerin print room. Paul Holz left the region at the age of 31 to pursue his artistic career as an art teacher in Breslau. Yet the artist, who died in Schleswig in 1938, never relinquished the connection to his original home. He used reed pens to draw the marshes and woods of his homeland.