August Tschinkel – Alle Räder stehen still: Streik [All Wheels Stand Still: Strike]
Original linocut on paper. Sheet: 28 × 28 cm; image: 12.5 × 12.5 cm. Signed in pencil “aug. tschinkel” beneath the image at lower right; titled “STREIK” in pencil at lower left. Monogrammed and dated “t 32” in the block.
Figurative-Constructivist composition by the Prague-born artist August Tschinkel (1905–1983), produced during his association with the Cologne Progressives. The image reduces workers and industrial machinery to an exceptionally economical system of interlocking geometric forms, giving visual expression to the strike slogan “Alle Räder stehen still” (“All wheels stand still”). Tschinkel joined the Cologne circle around Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle, Gerd Arntz, and August Sander in 1928 and later contributed to Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE project. The design dates from 1932; examples of this format have been described as later impressions from the original block, printed during the 1960s, reportedly in an edition of approximately 100 copies.