Vernichtung - Annihilation

VERNICHTUNG — ANNIHILATION

After Arno Breker.

The battle is already being decided.

Vernichtung, Annihilation, presents a violent equestrian struggle: a rearing horse at the center, one figure rising above the action with weapon raised, another forced downward beneath the collision of bodies, stone, and force.

Created in 1940 during Arno Breker’s period of monumental state commissions, the relief belongs to the same sculptural world as his other large architectural works of the era.

Breker compresses man, horse, weapon and movement into a single act of domination.

The composition does not rest.

The horse surges upward. One figure ascends. Another collapses.

Every line drives toward the moment of destruction.

The subject is not readiness. It is not departure. It is annihilation.

Not the beginning of conflict, but its crushing culmination.

Like Breker’s other major works of the period, Vernichtung was created within the official artistic culture of Nazi Germany. Its idealized classical bodies, martial imagery, and monumental ambition formed part of the regime’s political visual language, intended to present struggle, force, and victory in heroic form.

Unlike some of Breker’s better-documented monumental sculptures, the original fate of Vernichtung remains uncertain. No original monumental version is clearly known to survive.

What remains most clearly is its photographic and printed record.

Those surviving images preserve a work that appears to have belonged to a larger architectural and ideological world, much of which was never fully realized or no longer exists.

The relief draws its power from contrast:

The raised blade.

The falling body. The rearing horse.

The final imbalance between victor and vanquished.

Carefully restored and digitally prepared from surviving photographic material to preserve sculptural depth, tonal structure, and surface detail.

Printed on museum-grade matte paper.

This edition is exclusively offered through Thuleism.

Historical note: This print presents a historical artwork in its original context. Its inclusion does not constitute endorsement of the political regime for which the work was conceived.

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 Product details

- Museum-grade matte paper

- Archival pigment print

- Thick, durable stock

- Designed for framing

Each piece is set within the chosen paper format rather than printed edge to edge. The surrounding margins are intentional, allowing the work to breathe and making it easier to frame using widely available standard frame sizes.

Please note that the selected size refers to the overall paper size, not the dimensions of the printed image itself. The artwork is proportionally fitted within that format, with margins varying slightly depending on the original composition.

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Age restrictions: For adults
EU Warranty: 2 years
Other compliance information: Meets the small parts and magnetic flux index level requirements.

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