Lot 144

Outstanding in Theo Scharf's oeuvre was the portfolio Night in a city 1923. This series of twenty etchings is an account of the night-life of a modern city from early evening to dawn. Theatres, shops, restaurants, beers halls, cabarets, boxing rings, dimly lit boudoirs - all set the scene for leisure, both high and low, and all manner of illicit activity. Every social type is represented, from stuffy bourgeois burghers, slender aesthetes, shop girls and thick-set working men to the shadowy underclass of thieves and prostitutes. With clarity of vision and a well developed satirical eye, Scharf captured the vitality and excitement of modernity embodied in city life.

Anne Ryan, Theo Scharf, Night in a City, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2006