Image
Georg Scholz. Industriebauern.

Neue Sachlichkeit - 904

Audio file

Narrator (f):

Experiences of war and its economic and social consequences had a crucial influence on the attitude toward life in the 1920s. The war’s end had also made for a new beginning, but the event had left deep scars. A traumatized society was searching for a foothold and stability; it was challenged and overtaxed by technological innovations, new career areas, and role models. The era was marked by extreme contradictions.

Narrator (m):

While the artists of New Objectivity whom Hartlaub categorized as the right wing sought their salvation in a conservative escapism, the left mercilessly pilloried the dark sides of the postwar years. Georg Scholz was also one of the artists who expressed themselves veristically and critically about the injustices of their time in their work. Scholz chose here a language marked by satirical, caricatural overdrawing combined with clearly interpretable signs and ciphers. He was represented at the First International Dada Fair 1920 by the painting Industrial Farmers also known as Usury Farmers. Several glued-on details point to the collage techniques typical of Dada.

Narrator (f):

Even if the postwar years were generally characterized by poverty and misery, Scholz had a specific occasion that inspired this aggressive work. When he had been driven by hunger to try to find food in the countryside for himself and his family, he was curtly dismissed by a farmer. He struck back in his art by denouncing the ugliness, stupidity, greed, and unsympathetic hypocrisy of wealthy farmers, who profited from the war in the end.

Hector-Building > Level 0 > exhibition room 1

Georg Scholz (1890–1945)
Industriebauern / Industrial Farmers
1920
Öl auf Sperrholz / Oil on plywood
98 × 70 cm
Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal

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