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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 4
Lesson 1: Futurism and the Great War- Italian Futurism: An Introduction
- Futurist Free Word Painting
- Umberto Boccioni and the Futurist City
- Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
- Umberto Boccioni, "Dynamism of a Soccer Player"
- Gino Severini, Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin
- Giacomo Balla, Street Light
- Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the Anarchist Galli
- Duchamp-Villon, Horse
- War and dynamism
- 1913 | Schiess-Dusseldorf by Ludwig Hohlwein
- Tate: 1914 & 1915
- British Art and Literature During WWI
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1913 | Schiess-Dusseldorf by Ludwig Hohlwein
Discover how advertising, machinery and U-boats intersect on the eve of WWI. To learn about other great moments in modern art, take our online course, Modern Art, 1880-1945. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
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Would this be considered part of the ruling German party's "propaganda"?(8 votes)
I think it would be most correct to say that this was an advertisment poster from the industrial period preceding world war 1. In this period and a few years earlier he made posters for all kinds of machine manufacturing companies: cars, typewriters, cinematographic equipment. This is not yet war propaganda, but there is definitely a connection since the new industrial technologies played a huge part later in the war. Ludwig Hohlwein was a very productive poster designer with hundreds of clients. He did create war propaganda posters for both world wars, but these were commissioned by the government. Until 1919 Germany was an empire, but after the rise of Hitler, in the 1930's Hohlwein became a member of the Nazi party who commissioned several propaganda poster designs.(9 votes)
What was Ludwig Hohlwein occupation during the time he made this?(5 votes)
Graphic artist. He worked on advertisement posters at this time such as this and "Kaffee Hag", as seen in the other video clip found here(5 votes)
Is SCHIESS / DÜSSELDORFF a poster meant for something like the spider poster in the backround ?(2 votes)
Nice attention to detail. This lithograph was made as an advertisement of the machine tools created by Schiess, which was the main supplier of the German Navy (hence the U-Boat). The video on the "Tegen de Tariefwet, Vliegt niet in't Web!" poster by Louis Raemaekers is a political poster. The purposes of the two posters were different.
You can check out the video on the spider poster in the same list you found this video.(0 votes)
- Great video!! Did Hohlwein know of the Lusitania connection?(2 votes)
- The sinking of the RMS Lusitania happened in 1915, so he would not have been able to know that his work would be related to the sinking of that vessel (via the illustrated U-Boats) in the future.
He was probably well aware once it happened, however.(0 votes)
Video transcript
- We're in the MoMA stores looking at the symbolic representation in 1913 of industrial progress and technology by Ludwig Hohlwein. Who was based in Munich
and was at the forefront of a movement known as the Plakatstil, which gave prominence to
the product being advertised using the most economic
of means and colors. You can see how he's really exploited the tonalities of the
sea and sky to create this dramatic composition
of interlocking shapes. It's a poster lithographically
printed in Munich and it advertises the machine
tools produced by Schiess. Schiess were the main supplier for the great government
Navy shipyards in Germany. And they were based in Dusseldorf, the industrial heartland. In this image, Hohlwein has concentrated on the mysterious and stealthy presence of a submarine in the background. And in the foreground, the machine tools that were
produced by the client. With the simplest of means Hohlwein has communicated
the merger of sky and sea and the stealthy power
of this innovative U-boat which was to play a key
role in the First World War. In fact, only two years later, in 1915 it was a U-boat responsible for sinking the Lusitania, that directly provoked the
engagement of the United States in the First World War. (gentle music)