Franz Radziwill

With his visionary pictures of the end of the world, Franz Radziwill (1895–1983) became a co-founder of magical realism. On the occasion of his 125th birthday, Lichtspiele is the highpoint of a five-volume anniversary series, which is dedicated for the first time to his pictorial strategies. Besides baroque fantasy and the precision of Neue Sachlichkeit, what makes him unmistakable is above all how he stages light. Essays by Birgit Denizel, Roland März, and Rainer Stamm shed light on Radziwill’s engagement with the cinema of the 1920s, the civilization-critical potential of his painting, and his varied reception since 1925.