Hans Schmitz (1896-1977) - Arbeiterausbildung

Hans Schmitz: Arbeiterausbildung (Workers’ Education), 1925

Original linocut, printed in black on paper from the artist’s original block. The block was cut in 1925; this impression belongs to the edition published and printed by Galerie Werner Kunze, Berlin, in 1972. Edition of 100. Monogrammed “S” in the block.

Image 6.0 × 13.5 cm. Presented in a white wooden frame with a grey passe-partout, 36.0 × 36.0 × 4.0 cm.

In used condition, with signs of age and handling consistent with the age of the work. All visible traces are shown in the photographs.

The work belongs to a group of small linocuts made by Schmitz in the 1920s on the subject of working life. Other titles from this group include Arbeiter, Arbeitergang, Arbeiterpaar and Arbeiterfreizeit. Prints of this kind were conceived for the workers’ press and political pamphlets. Their small format and stark black-and-white contrast served reproducibility and legibility rather than the collector’s cabinet. The 1972 Kunze edition, signed by the artist five years before his death, made these blocks accessible again after decades of neglect.

Hans Schmitz (Cologne 1896 – 1977) was a German sculptor and graphic artist. With Augustin Tschinkel and Gerd Arntz, he is one of the surviving members of the Cologne “Gruppe progressiver Künstler”, the Cologne Progressives. This informal association of avant-garde painters, sculptors, architects and writers was led by the painters Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle. Its connections reached well beyond the Rhineland.

After a craft apprenticeship, Schmitz began studying painting at the Cologne Kunstgewerbeschule. Conscription at the outbreak of the First World War interrupted his studies. The war marked the beginning of a lasting political commitment, and in 1923 he co-founded the Progressives with Hoerle and Seiwert.

The group combined a Constructivist formal language with a socially engaged subject matter drawn from the industrial and working world of the Weimar Republic. That language rested on flat planes, geometric reduction and a rejection of illusionistic depth. Figures appear as types rather than individuals, a deliberate rejection of personal expression in favour of a collective, legible image. Under National Socialism the group’s work was condemned as “degenerate”.

Provenance: Galerie Werner Kunze, Berlin