A collection of postcards showing caricatures by German silhouette cutter and draughtsman Paul Konewka (1841-1871).
Paul Konewka was born on 5 April 1841 in Greifswald, northern Germany. As a child, the son of an employee of the University of Greifswald, he liked to make paper cut-outs of human and animal figures. After school he learned sculpture and painting in the studios of Friedrich Drake and Adolph Menzel in Berlin, among others, but continued to focus on the art of the silhouette. The friendship with Herrmann Karl Fröhlich, a silhouette tailor twenty years his senior, was significant for his artistic development. His first album with 6 silhouettes, which he released in 1862, was unsuccessful, but he achieved artistic recognition with his work on Goethe's Faust of 1865 ("Twelve sheets of Goethe's Faust", a composition for a lampshade), which was preceded by a single sheet entitled “Easter Walk” in 1864.
After moving to Stuttgart in 1867, where he frequented Mörike's circle, his most important works followed: Illustrations for Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream (Heidelberg 1868) and for Falstaff (Lahr 1870).
He died on 13 May 1871 in Berlin.
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