AUGUST SANDER | COELLEN AUS RAND UND BAND EM JAHR 1929 (COLOGNE GOES WILD IN THE YEAR 1929)

The photographer to Gerd Arntz, circa 1929

By descent to the present owners

Zeitgenossen: August Sander und Kunstszene der 20er Jahre im Rheinland (Göttingen, 2000), p. 49 and p. 218

Michael Cornelius Zepter, ed., Maskerade: Kunstlerkarneval und Kunstlerfeste in der Moderne (Köln, 2012), unpaginated

With its outrageous masquerades, parades, and feasting, the Mardi Gras celebrations of the 1920s in Cologne were among the most famous carnivals in Germany. The three-day-long February celebration was a period of intense creativity and commercial opportunity for Sander, who found a steady stream of costumed patrons at the Lumpenbälle hosted by the city’s progressive artists. In the present image, Sander collaged a veritable who’s-who of illustrious partygoers, even incorporating his own silhouette with camera into the upper right portion of the image. 

Prints of Coellen aus Rand und Band em Jahr 1929 are rare and have only once appeared at auction. A print of this image is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.