Screenprint by Walter Menne

Born in Marburg in 1908, Walter Menne studied in Bonn, Munich, Cologne and Berlin. He went on to study fine art in Berlin and Munich. From this time onwards, he formed friendships with Erich Heckel, Otto Dix and Christian Rohlfs. From 1946 he worked as a doctor and artist. He was a senior physician at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital Pathological Institute in Berlin. In 1963 he had a joint exhibition with Cy Twombly, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Peter Brüning, Otto Piene and Julius Bissier at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin. He had his first solo exhibition at the Georg Nothelfer Gallery in 1989.

Screenprinting is a technique that involves pushing ink through a fine mesh that is mounted on a frame to transfer it onto paper or another material.

To create the image, specific areas of the screen are blocked off using hand-drawn or photographic stencils, leaving only the desired parts open for ink to pass through. A rubber tool called a squeegee is then used to evenly spread the ink across the stencil, forcing it through the open areas of the mesh and onto the material beneath. For multi-color designs, a separate screen and stencil are used for each color.

The technique gained widespread recognition as an art form in the 1960s, thanks to American Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. However, its origins trace back to around 1,000 AD in China.

In the FRIDAY BIRD Classic Collection, we present works by established artists that we have selected from galleries, publishers or other art institutions. It is important to us that they fit in with our aesthetic of timeless, beautiful art, in which we see a poetic quality. We carefully check the provenance of each individual work to ensure its authenticity.