Wellcome Library Item of the Month, January 2011: A moment of pain and triumph

"The print is the work of the German artist Conrad Felixmüller (1897-1977). It was spotted recently in an auction at Pforzheim in Baden-Württemberg, and is the second of his works to enter the Wellcome Library. The other work (Wellcome Library no. 46958i) is a World War I subject: it shows a soldier who has had a mental breakdown and is incarcerated in a military asylum. It draws on Felixmüller's never-forgotten four-week service as a hospital orderly in the Arnsdorf asylum which had been taken over as a military hospital. The picture of childbirth is listed in Söhn's catalogue of Felixmüller's graphic works. [1] However the catalogue of the most comprehensive collection of his prints - the gift of the Felixmüller family to the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf - omits it. It's obviously a rarity [3], but such a striking image deserves to be accessible to a wide public, hence its acquisition by the Wellcome Library is marked by its selection as the Library's Item of this Month"