Augustin Tschinkel (1905-1983) - Personnage

Augustin Tschinkel: Personnage — do portfólio La Lune en Rodage III

Original linocut on wove paper, an unnumbered copy from the edition of 230. Monogrammed "t32" upper left within the image and hand-signed "aug. tschinkel" in pencil lower right.

Executed entirely in stark black-and-white, the composition assembles a group of stylised human figures — reduced to ovoid heads, geometric torsos and a raised, clenched fist — against a machinery of large wheels, spokes and interlocking cogwheels. Figure and machine are treated as equivalent constructive elements: bodies, gears and circular forms interlock into a single flat, emblematic sign. This fusion of the human type with industrial form, and the militant motif of the raised fist, is central to the visual language of Figurative Constructivism as developed by the Cologne Progressives, combining a rigorously geometric, illusion-free surface with an emphatically social iconography rooted in the workers' culture of the Weimar years.

Augustin Tschinkel (1905–1983) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and became, in the 1920s, a member of the Gruppe progressiver Künstler (Cologne Progressives) founded by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle, whose circle included Otto Freundlich, Gerd Arntz and the photographer August Sander. He collaborated with the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum under the direction of Gerd Arntz, contributing to the development of the pictographic statistics that would become the Isotype system. His solo exhibition Augustin Tschinkel. Grafiek, Illustraties, Typografie was shown at the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Tschinkel was also the author of numerous books and articles on art and design.

La Lune en Rodage is the three-volume collective portfolio assembled by the Basel-based publisher, psychoanalyst and collector Carl Laszlo (Pécs 1923 – Basel 2013), issued by Edition Panderma, Basel, in 1960, 1965 and 1977. The three volumes gather a total of some 180 original works and form a dense survey of the European avant-garde between the 1950s and the 1970s — with contributions by, among others, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Bridget Riley, Günter Fruhtrunk, Meret Oppenheim, Bruno Munari, Hans Arp and Victor Vasarely. Several of these contributions mark turning points in the work of the artists involved: Castellani's sheet is regarded as his first documented graphic work, and Manzoni's Achrome as the only multiple the artist ever realised. Its inclusion in the third volume places Tschinkel's contribution firmly within this international avant-garde anthology, while extending the constructivist tradition of the Cologne Progressives into the second half of the century.

Condition: very good archival condition, with a small bend to the left side and a very small spot on the paper (see photographs).

Provenance: Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel — Galerie von Bartha, Basel — Private Collection, Basel.