Monument to the Unknown Prostheses

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Monument to the Unknown Prostheses (Heinrich Hoerle)
Monument to the Unknown Prostheses
Heinrich Hoerle , 1930
Oil on cardboard
70 × 85 cm
From the Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

The monument to the unknown prostheses is a painting by the German painter and member of the Kölner Progressive Heinrich Hoerle , created in 1930 . The 70 × 85 cm painting, executed in oil on cardboard, is one of the painter's main works and addresses the fate of war disabled people after the First World War as a marginalized fringe group. It can also be read as an anti-war image. Today it is in the collection of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal .

Image description

Hoerle's painting shows three highly abstracted figures reduced to the essentials in their appearance in front of a background constructed from color fields, which remains completely abstract except for the landscape indicated behind the third figure. In the foreground of the picture and at eye level are two figures facing each other and shown in profile. Their heads appear to be illuminated by X-rays and each shadowy reveals the underlying skeleton. The head of the figure on the left is only a good two thirds illuminated, the ear appears fully plastic. Both figures are provided with individual profiles, which can be seen in the nose and eye areas as well as in the skull and skeletal shapes. The skullcap of the left is clearly flatter than that of the right and her nose is also more characteristically formed by a hill on the bridge of the nose. What is particularly striking, however, are the different X-ray views of the two skeletal forms: that of the figure on the left appears block-like and only suggests a skull profile through the c-shaped eye socket with a black circle as a pupil. In contrast, both the skull and the eye of the figure on the right show more details: Here the eye socket is circular with a blue circle as a pupil and the skull skeleton also follows the actual profile of the figure more closely: although it is also shown schematically here, it is preserved greater individuality thanks to the line structure in the jaw area reminiscent of wiring. While one line continues in a curve from a point roughly corresponding to the position of the pharynx to the back of the head, the second is connected to the schematically indicated cervical spine, which in turn ends abruptly above the torso of the figure.

The actual bodies of both figures are visible from around the waistline and are strictly geometrically composed: arms and upper bodies are assembled from cylindrical volumes, the individual shapes of which are given plasticity, especially through broad shadows. In both figures only one arm is visible: in the left the right and in the right the left. As the title of the work suggests, both figures are wearing prostheses: on the left, the shape of the arm merges into an eye-shaped hand prosthesis, on the right, a sickle shape replaces the hand.

In the center of the background and at chest or nose level between the two figures sits a third figure, shown in a frontal view. It is also composed of geometric shapes and, like the two figures in the foreground, shows mutilations. The tubular legs are amputated from the knee and stretch their cut surfaces towards the viewer, and while the figure's right arm is angled at stomach height in front of the body, the left arm is only present as a stump. The oval head is also not intact and has no other individualizing features besides just one left eye.

The background of the picture is made up of rectangular colored fields and only reveals a reference to the landscape on those four that capture the figure in the center of the picture: the figure here appears to be sitting on a green lawn in front of a blue sky and an indicated red house wall, one in the blue colored field above on the left The ocher-colored circle appearing on the seated figure is reminiscent of the sun or moon and intensifies the impression of the landscape. The red color field on the right behind the seated figure also includes the artist's distinctive signature in the upper part, a stylized "h" surrounded by the 1930 image date.

Background and interpretation

Around 2.7 million soldiers returned from the First World War, injured or permanently ill. As a result, the depiction of war-disabled men, characterized by amputations or prostheses, is an artistic subject that comes up more frequently after the First World War. Otto Dix in particular took on the often precarious situation of those returning from the war, who were physically and mentally injured, and showed them, among other things. in his 1920 work Die Kriegskrüppel , Matchstick Sellers and Skatplayers as existences pushed to the fringes of society. At the same time, Heinrich Hoerle began to deal with the portrayal of disabled people. As an employee of the left-wing, pacifist magazine Die Aktion , Hoerle, who saw himself as a socialist and Marxist, sensitized himself to the social grievances of the post-war period and addressed the social, physical and psychological misery of these men in the 12 lithographs of the cripple folder from 1920.

  • Heinrich Hoerle, cripple folder: Help the cripple , lithograph, 1920.

  • Heinrich Hoerle, Krüppelmappe: The everlasting pain , lithograph, 1920.

  • Heinrich Hoerle, Krüppelmappe: Am Wegende , lithograph, 1920.

Although Hoerle distanced himself from the portfolio shortly after it was published, this was mainly for stylistic reasons and less because of the setting of the themes. This is why the cripple folder marks the beginning of a continued examination of the so-called cripples on the one hand, but also the transition to an abstract, constructive language of images and forms on the other. In the following years, Hoerle realized several paintings and graphic prints, the focus of which was on prosthetic figures and related topics: For example, factory workers from 1922 shows a figure with a prosthetic arm and the cripple, and from 1923 a man with an arm and leg amputation. Around the same time he made, with Der Europäische , Kopfprothese und Prostesenkopf, linocuts of a schematically depicted person with an arm and leg amputee, as well as two variations of a head that appeared to be X-rayed. Around 1930 this discussion culminated in the two works Three Invalids (Machine Men) and Monument to the Unknown Prostheses , which was already praised by contemporaries as being particularly convincing in content and expression.

With its reference to the tomb of the unknown soldier , the title makes direct reference to the war and its consequences, and the formal composition with the two large figures, the middle smaller one, reveals borrowings from the type of monument: as Hans M. Schmidt explains, references their strict axiality in connection with the picture title inevitably refers to the monument aspect , but at the same time also refers to a text that Hoerle's artist colleague and friend Franz Wilhelm Seiwert wrote on his cripple portfolio :

“Have you not yet seen the monuments of the crimes of evil that go through our streets […] Here is a poor man who has a pencil. He saw the monuments and signed them that you should see them. "

  • Heinrich Hoerle, head prosthesis , 1923, linocut, 27 × 18 cm.

  • Heinrich Hoerle, prosthetic head , mid-1920s. Linocut, 20.5 × 14 cm.

In the distinctive design of the figure heads as abstract, but nevertheless provided with individual profiles, X-ray images, Schmidt sees references to Hoerles and his friend Seiwert. Although they were not actually war invalids, they suffered physically throughout their lives: Seiwert due to a skull wound, the result of an X-ray experiment in childhood, and Hoerle due to a tuberculosis that flared up again and again , which ultimately led to his early death in 1936. On an artistic level, the two figural heads clearly refer to the lithographs head prosthesis and prosthetic head already mentioned above . But while the prosthetic head in the painting was only changed by the mirrored reproduction and the arrangement of the pupil, Hoerle varied the head prosthesis insofar as he smoothed it creatively and made it appear less radical: The originally indicated neck area and forehead wrinkles and also those are omitted Teeth in the lower jaw still present in the lithography, which give the profile the impression of a person severely wounded in the face, are left out here. The shape of the skeleton profile and the fully plastic ear are identical to the original design.

With the tool-like appearance of the prostheses of all three figures in the picture, Hoerle seems to be addressing two aspects of prosthetics in the interwar period: On the one hand, the reproduction of the prostheses as mechanical substitutes for the hands of the respective figure corresponds to the state of the art at the time. On the other hand, Hoerle could be himself Also refer to the contemporary criticism of the reintegration of amputees into the world of work: It not only saw the positive effect of regained participation of the war disabled in working life, but also the support of the economy with all means and all available human resources criticized.

In 1930, after a decade of continued work on the motif of the prosthesis- wearing figure, this creative phase ended for Heinrich Hoerle with the monument to the unknown prostheses . In the few years that remained until his death, he devoted himself primarily to portraiture .

Provenance

After its creation in 1930, the monument to the unknown prostheses remained in the artist's possession until the artist's death. Following Hoerle's death, it passed into the possession of his widow Trude Alex-Hoerle, from whose possession the Von der Heydt Museum was able to acquire it in 1970.

literature

  • Dirk Backes: Heinrich Hoerle - Life and Work [exhib.-cat., Kölnischer Kunstverein, October 16, 1981 - January 10, 1982], Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7927-0645-8 .
  • Carol Poore: Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, Ann Arbor 2007, ISBN 978-0-472-11595-2 .
  • Lynette Roth: Painting as a Weapon: Progressive Cologne 1920–1933 - Seiwert, Hoerle, Arntz [exhibition cat., Cologne, Museum Ludwig, 15.3. - 15.6.2008], Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-86560-398-2 .
  • Hans M. Schmidt: war and croup cripples. On works by Heinrich Hoerle and other Cologne “Progressives”, in: Cepl-Kaufmann, Gertrude (Ed.): War and Utopia - Art, Literature and Politics in the Rhineland after the First World War, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-619- 3 .
  • Walter Vitt: Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Cologne 1975.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Carol Poore: Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture . Ann Arbor 2007, pp. 7 .
  2. ^ Walter Vitt: Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert . Cologne 1975, p. 2 .
  3. ^ Walter Vitt: Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert . Cologne 1975, p. 5 .
  4. ↑ Dirk Backes: Heinrich Hoerle - life and work . Cologne 1981, p. 27 .
  5. ↑ Dirk Backes: Heinrich Hoerle - life and work . Cologne 1981, p. 36 .
  6. ^ Lynette Roth: Painting as a Weapon: Progressive Cologne 1920-1933 - Seiwert, Hoerle, Arntz . Cologne 2008, p. 94 .
  7. ↑ a b Hans M. Schmidt: War and Krupp cripples. On works by Heinrich Hoerle and other Cologne “Progressives” . In: Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann (Hrsg.): War and Utopia - Art, literature and politics in the Rhineland after the First World War . Essen 2006, p. 285 .
  8. ↑ Hans M. Schmidt: War and Krupp cripples. On works by Heinrich Hoerle and other Cologne “Progressives” . In: Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann (Hrsg.): War and Utopia - Art, literature and politics in the Rhineland after the First World War . Essen 2006, p. 288 .
  9. ^ Carol Poore: Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture . Ann Arbor 2007, pp. 8-13 .
  10. ↑ Dirk Backes: Heinrich Hoerle - life and work . Cologne 1981, p. 177 .