Disabled Workers

Conrad FelixmüllerWW-1922-092817

1922·Brush and pen and black ink on cream laid paper·64.6 × 50 cm (25 7/16 × 19 11/16 in.)

<p>Although created several years after the end of World War I, this drawing shows that workers engaged in war production were as vulnerable to serious hazards and death as the soldiers at the front. The mine workers, with their bandaged arms, are set against the soot-lined streets of a town in the industrial Ruhr Valley. The work effectively demonstrates the cruelty and senselessness of the war as a society-wide phenomenon.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1922
Medium: Brush and pen and black ink on cream laid paper
Dimensions: 64.6 × 50 cm (25 7/16 × 19 11/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Conrad Felixmüller

Artist

Conrad Felixmüller

Printmaking

Conrad Felixmüller was a German Expressionist painter and printmaker known for stark figurative works and social commentary rendered in angular, distorted forms. Active from the 1920s onward, he employed woodcut, lithography, and oil painting to depict urban subjects, working-class life, and psychological intensity with a rawness characteristic of Weimar-era German Expressionism. His practice remained committed to figuration and emotional directness throughout a long career spanning the interwar period, Nazi occupation, and postwar Germany.

Dresden, Germany

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Portrait of Christian Rohlfs

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ABC: A Nonsense Alphabet in Pictures with Verses by Londa and Conrad Felixmüller (ABC: Ein Geschütteltes, Geknütteltes Alphabet in Bildern mit Versen von Londa und Conrad Felixmüller)

1925 · Book with sixteen hand-colored woodcuts on cream laid paper

WW-1925-111242