Hans Schmitz (1896-1977): Hockende

Artist
Hans Schmitz
 
Title
Die Hockende 
 
Medium
Woodcut
 
Material 
Paper
 
Dimensions
28 x 28 cm
 
Editor
Edition Panderma, Basel
 
Year
1966, published 1977
 
Signature
Signed in pencil 
 
Provenance
Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel
Galerie von Bartha, Basel
Private Collection, Basel
 
Condition / Restauration 
mint archival condition 
 
Biography: 
The sculptor Hanz Schmitz, born in Cologne in 1896, belongs with Augustin Tschinkel and Gerd Arntz to the survivors of the Cologne group "Progressive Künstler". This quite informal union of avant-garde painters, sculptors, architects, writers whose leading minds were the Cologne painters Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, not only played a role in the local area, but also had international relations far beyond Rhenish territory.
The visit of Hans Schmitz at the Cologne School of Applied Arts, specialized painting - after a craft apprenticeship - was suddenly interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and his conscription to military service. Not only here in the "steel thunderstorms" was the transformation of the politically always committed. November 20, 1918 saw the 22-year-old as a private and member of the soldier's council with a 12o-strong artillery Messtrupp, after almost four weeks march, in Cologne move where he to dissolve the unit in conjunction with the very near the Rhine located former hotel du North-based workers 'and soldiers' council took up. It means an even stronger political engagement with changing interests and often participation in Spartakusbund, Association of Free Socialists, Anarcho Syndicalist Groups, General Union of Workers and others. It was a politically very turbulent time back in time when the spirits were fighting, often fought over, because of various revolutionary socialist theories - forgetting the common action.
In 1923, together with Hoerle and Seiwert, the group "Progressives" was founded. With the political commitment and the progressives described above, there is a kind of background for the artistic work of Hans Schmitz.
It includes both plastic and graphics, with the plastic in the foreground, while the graphic often born of the demand of the day, deliberately has a social-leaning character. Both - sculptural and graphic creation - the topic is common: the worker and his world.