Genre scene

The graphic by Sella Hasse, made using the linocut technique and printed on thick cream paper, is the seventh composition from the Rhytmus der Arbeit (Rhythm of Work) series. The lack of a signature - the monogram SH - indicates that this is a test print. The cycle initially comprised six linocuts, a woodcut and a card dedicated to Käthe Kollwitz made as a linocut. Then two additional linocuts were added. The title card was never published; it has only survived as a design drawing. The artist worked on the series between 1912 and 1916 and published it in the Victor Singer Publishing House in Hamburg in 1916. The scene depicts a group of women in working clothes and headscarves working on constructing a railway track. Lined up one behind the other, the women are making dynamic hand movements as they use pickaxes to break stones on the railway ramp. Each of the workers is shown in a different phase of the movement. In the distance, in the background, he showed a similar group of women. Sella Hasse was born in Bitterfeld in 1878 and died in Berlin in 1963. She was a student at the Berlin Academy of Art. She studied with prominent representatives of classical modernism - Franz Skarbina, Walter Leistikow and Lovis Corinth. Her friendship with the Expressionist Käthe Kollwitz influenced the subject matter of her works and her treatment of her characters. Hasse depicted workers, the urban poor and the social misery of women. She worked in Berlin, Hamburg and Weimar.

Ewa Gwiazdowska