Sick Boy I, c. 1914

Stripped to the waist, a sick boy sits weakly in a corner. His skinny body is sunken in on itself, shoulders sagging, he has rings under his large sunken eyes. The clearly outlined figure is seen against a vivid background. Appearing there is the Angel of Death like a foreboding of the child’s destiny. In 1914, Georg Ehrlich (1897–1966) still was a student at the Vienna Arts and Crafts School. Already in 2015, aged only 18, he was drafted for World War I as a soldier and had some incisive experiences at the Russian and the Italian front. The graphic artist and later sculptor kept concerning himself with the representation of the human condition in its many dimensions throughout his oeuvre. With his sensitive observation, Ehrlich was able to give visibility to the most delicate nuances of the boy’s physical and mental tensions.

AK, 2021