Bertolt
Brecht (1983)
Today Prechtl is known as the designer of Spiegel cover illustrations, as a poster artist and book illustrator. But in his early freelance years he enjoyed considerable success as a lithographer and painter. Up to 1970 painting played an important role as one of Prechtl's many artistic activities. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the emphasis began to shift. The drawing now becomes central, but it is often combined with various painterly techniques and other techniques from the graphic arts, such as the colour handprint, which creates the skin-print pattern so prominent in Prechtl's work.
In 1964 Prechtl discovered Brecht's play Saint Joan of the Stockyards. He liked it so much that he planned a series of illustrations, twelve cardboard panels with the working title Ikonostasie der Johanna (Joan's Iconostasis). This idea was perhaps influenced by Richard Hiepe, the editor of a left-wing art journal, tendenzen, which supported a committed realism. Prechtl completed five pictures for this series, and he also created further pictures of Brecht.
