New Objectivity - 924

Narrator (m):

In his Train Station, painted between 1924 and 1926, Karl Völker depicted a crowd of people descending an elongated stairway in a metropolitan train station. The image of the human being he conveys is perplexing: The individual becomes a type reduced to a mask; it is as if they were robot-like figures controlled by an outside power.

Narrator (f):

Karl Völker, an exponent of proletarian, revolutionary art, often addressed the inhumanity of industrial production and the exploitation of factory workers. He was a founding member of the Workers’ Council for Art in Halle and as a member of the German Communist Party worked for the leftist newspapers Das Wort (The Word) and Klassenkampf (Class Struggle) In numerous works, he shed light on the dark side of rationalized labor processes and their effect on people, including poverty, illness, and hunger.

Narrator (m):

At the same time, Völker participated in various architectural competitions and was interested in the construction of social housing. He dedicated a painting to the construction material of the modern era: concrete. This constructively geometric “picture of industry” from around 1924 also shows his effort to come to terms with industrial architecture and the role of workers.