Schad is a contradictory character. For all his icy-cool realism, Schad's mesmerizing paintings are characterized by an intense engagement with his models. While he is best known as a realist, he is also credited by the Dadaists as the inventor of abstract photograms, or "Schadographs."

Published in conjunction with an exhbition at the Neue Galerie in New York, Christian Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit includes over 140 full-color reproductions of Schad's paintings, drawings, woodcuts and "Schadographs."