August Tschinkel – Kohle: Kohlebaron [Coal: The Coal Baron]

Original linocut on laid paper. Image: 25 × 14 cm; sheet: 44 × 33 cm. Signed in pencil “aug. tschinkel” at lower right and dated “1932” at lower left; monogrammed “t” in the block. A very good, well-margined impression, with only light signs of handling. A particularly effective example of Tschinkel’s socially engaged Figurative Constructivism. Twelve miners are shown labouring underground in two mechanically repeated columns, while an enormously enlarged mine owner stands above them, flanked by a pithead and smoking factories. Through radical differences of scale and the pictogram-like repetition of the miners, Tschinkel transforms the industrial hierarchy into an immediately legible image of labour and economic power. The composition was created in 1932. This impression belongs to the later edition of 100 printed from the original block for the portfolio Aktive Graphik 1927–1937, published by Werner Kunze in Berlin in 1972.