Enormous Limited Edition Lithograph of Artist Eugen Spiro’s Famed Portrait of Albert Einstein, Signed by Both Einstein and Spiro

We can find no other of the limited edition lithographs signed by Einstein, making this perhaps unique

Eugen Spiro studied art in Germany and was a master student of Franz von Stuck in Munich. His early portraits of women appeared frequently in, as well as on the covers of, the magazine Der Jugend. In 1906), Spiro relocated to Paris where he studied the French masters and impressionists, became a Professor at the Académie Moderne, co-founded the Salon d’Automne, and belonged to the circle of artists and writers of the Parisian Café du Dôme. Other “Domiers” included Gauguin, Picasso, Hemingway, Modigliani, and Sartre. In 1914, he returned to Berlin where he became Chairman of the Berliner Sezession and a Professor at the Berlin Academy of Arts. He remained in Berlin until Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, when he was forbidden to work because of his Jewish background. He voluntarily resigned from his posts in 1934, secured a visa, and was allowed to immigrate to Paris in 1935. Spiro remained in Paris for the next five years, operating as a freelance artist, painting portraits and giving private lessons, participating in exhibits in Amsterdam and London. Together with other immigrants he founded, and became co-director and first chairman of, the Union des Artistes libres in Paris.

With the fall of France in 1940, Spiro was again forced to flee, this time via Spain and Portugal, arriving in the United States in 1941 at the age of 67, a relatively unknown artist in America. Spiro, a well-known artist in Europe, had asked Albert Einstein years earlier back in Germany, to sit for a portrait. At the time, Einstein had replied that he would sit only for unknown artists. After Spiro’s arrival in the U.S. in 1941, he once again approached Einstein to sit for a portrait, this time as a newly arrived émigré and an unknown artist in his newly adopted homeland. This time Einstein agreed and Spiro created his well-known portrait of the physicist. Spiro’s paintings hang in many museums worldwide including the National Galerie in Berlin, the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Bezelle Museum in Jerusalem and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Francesco Mendelsohn, a cousin of composer Felix Mendelsohn, was a German actor and director, but becoming a pupil of Pablo Casals, became a professional cellist. He was one of Berlin’s intellectual elite in the years before the Nazis came into power, and knew and played for Albert Einstein. Francesco Mendelsohn was also a well-known collector, with painting of such luminaries as Toulouse-Lautrec and Corot. He fled Germany in 1935 and settled in the United States, but his collection was seized.

An enormous 16 by 17 inch lithograph of Spiro’s 1941 portrait of Einstein, produced soon after, number 6 of an edition of just 27, signed in pencil by Spiro. This copy is inscribed and signed by Einstein, “For Francesco Mendelsohn, Albert Einstein, 1942.”

It is not known for certain whether Einstein signed any other of the 27 lithographs, but checking public sale records going back 50 years, the only two lithographs we can find were not signed by Einstein, making this perhaps unique. After the war, Einstein tried to help the Mendelsohns reclaim their art, but the efforts were unavailing.