The Dance
  • Otto Greiner
  • Leipzig 1869 - 1916 Munich
  • The Dance, 1895
  • Red chalk on beige paper,
  • monogramed and dated lower left:
    O Gre 1895
  • 465 × 360 mm

After first studying at the academy of his hometown of Leipzig, Otto Greiner continued his education in 1888 at Alexander Liezen-Mayer’s art school in Munich. Three years later he set off an a journey through Italy that would have a decisive effect on his life. After first staying in Florence, Greiner settled in Rome in 1891, where he was soon to find a second homeland. In Rome, he also met Max Klinger (1857-1920), who would remain a friend and influential colleague to him all of his life. Several years of intense work back in Germany confirmed Greiner in his decision to move definitively to Rome in 1898; there, he had also found his muse and subsequent wife, Nannina Duranti. However, Greiner’s decision did not exactly assist his career; he was too far from his clients and public commissions in Leipzig or Munich.

Greiner repeated the subject of an idealized, classicizing dance of faun-like figures in a famous lithograph in 1896 (Fig. 1).