Scheine des Todes
Theo Matejko, 1923
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 16% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA German placard of 1923 designed by Theo Matejko, the Austrian illustrator whose reportage-influenced drawing dominated Weimar film advertising in the middle twenties. The title alone dates it: 1923 was the hyperinflation year, and the German screen filled with pictures about paper that kills — forged documents, worthless notes, contracts with fatal small print. The fantastic and the financial were briefly the same genre. Matejko draws like a newspaper artist under deadline — quick, gestural, and far looser than the flat poster styles around him. The year Germany learned what a piece of paper could do.
- Maker
- Theo Matejko
- Date
- 1923
- Medium of the original
- One-sheet poster
- Original held by
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit
- Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Cleared for print
- Catalogue number
- PA-00724
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 16% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | 141 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | Wrong shape: a 11% crop |
| 12 x 18 in | 94 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 16% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | 70 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 11% crop |
| 20 x 30 in | 56 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 16% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | 47 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 40 in | Wrong shape: a 11% crop |
| 36 x 48 in | Wrong shape: a 11% crop |
| 40 x 60 in | 28 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 1,141 x 1,700 px, srgb, sRGB
- Tone
- Darks 24, lights 230 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 9.4
- Notes
- Neutrals lean toward green: the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
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