Kuss
1899
Emil Rudolf Weiss captures a tender moment in his 1899 piece 'Kuss' (German for 'Kiss'), where a couple locked in an embrace glows in warm reds against a cool, swirling blue seascape. The clouds above mirror perfectly in the water below, creating a dreamy, almost symmetrical backdrop that feels straight out of the Art Nouveau movement. As a key figure in the Berlin Secession, Weiss often explored themes of love and nature with this kind of delicate, graphic simplicity, making this a beautiful example of turn-of-the-century German illustration.