Genre scene

The composition Frauen im Bergwerk, also known as Frauen mit Förderwagen (Women with Mine Carts), depicts female workers moving carts loaded with ore. The graphic, made in linocut technique and printed on thick cream paper, is one of the additional compositions from the Rhytmus der Arbeit (Rhythm of Work) cycle. The cycle consisted of six linocuts, a woodcut, and a card dedicated to Käthe Kollwitz made as a linocut. The title card was never published and 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. Hard-working women moving underneath an openwork steel construction, along which the wires of an electric line were routed, is one of the industrial themes taken up by Sela Hasse. The artist was keen to combine motifs of the industrial landscape with human figures that reflected the specificity of the modern world and was also highly expressive. Interest in, or even admiration for, industrial themes can be observed in many artists working in the first decades of the 20th century. The specificity of Hasse's works consisted in combining a modern, expressive composition with depicting workers in their complex social situation, which testifies to the artist's great sensitivity.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