Klinger, Max (
b Leipzig, 18 Feb. 1857;
d Grossjena, nr. Naumburg, 5 July 1920). German painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He studied in Karlsruhe and Berlin, then, after brief periods in Brussels, Berlin, and Munich, he spent the years 1883–6 in Paris, 1886–8 in Berlin, and 1888–93 in Rome. After his return to Germany in 1893 he settled in his native Leipzig, where his home became one of the centres of the city's cultural life. His work reveals a powerful imagination and an often morbid interest in themes of love and death. As a painter he is best known for his enormous
Judgement of Paris (1885–7, KH Mus., Vienna), in which the frame is part of the decorative scheme. As a sculptor he experimented with
polychromy in the manner of Greek
chryselephantine statues; the culmination was his statue of Beethoven (1899–1902, Mus. der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig) in white and coloured marbles, bronze, alabaster, and ivory. It is as a printmaker, however, that Klinger is now best known and most clearly showed his originality, especially in
Adventures of a Glove (three series, begun 1881), a grotesque exploration of fetishism that antedated the publication of Freud's theories. These etchings concern a hapless young man and his involvement with an elusive lost glove that has clearly sexual connotations. Together with other works of Klinger, they have been claimed as forerunners of
Surrealism, and his influence can be seen in the work of
de Chirico (one of his greatest admirers),
Dalí, and
Ernst, amongst others.
