Hans Friedrich Grohs: A Memento Mori for Elisabeth Grohs Treskow, May 15, 1899-April 2, 1924

Enormously grief stricken and having recently departed from the Bauhaus Art Academy in Weimar, the German expressionist artist, Hans Friedrich Grohs (1892-1981) created the spiritually captivating and soul-searching art within this book as a dedication to his first wife, Elisabeth Grohs Treskow (1899-1924), who died shortly after the death of their first child. Expressions of love and sadness, grief and prayer, God¿s grace and healing, and life and death are portrayed and felt within its pages. The artist utilizes the highly graphic theme of the Dance of Death to capture and express his tormented soul and in the process he transcends beyond the mere voiceless void of death to a resurrection of life everlasting. In its pages one may hear echoes of prayers to God, prayers similar to that of David in the Psalms, such as Psalms 130: ¿Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!¿ In The ABC of Death, 1924, graphic prints one can see a mastery of expressionistic style applied as two death figures are intertwined around the geometry of the letters. The spiritual aphorisms accompanying the letters provide a form of meditation and spiritual healing. In a special DVD included, the art is further choreographed beautifully to the music of the German expressionist composer, Anton Webern (1883-1945).