-The key issue of the graphic portfolio created by the Hungarian artist Bencze László is the massacre near Sichon, North Korea, in the autumn and winter of 1950 with more than thirty thousand victims, mainly civilians. From the Communist side, these war atrocities were attributed to the American invading forces. Like Picasso’s famous painting Massacre en Corée (1951), Laszlo´s graphic cycle was conceptually inspired by the example of Goya. In terms of motifs, the influence of the Chinese revolutionary woodcut movement under Lu Xun is distinctive, of artists like Li Hua, Zhao Yannian, or Zheng Yefu, to whom László tries to come close in his pen and ink drawings, also in structural respects.
Alexander Roob’s “History of Press Graphics. 1819-1921. The Age of Graphic Journalism” is out now. (Taschen Cologne, Hardcover, 24.6 x 37.2 cm). In over 600 pages, this far-reaching compendium presents press illustration and graphic journalism as a distinct and unique genre and a laboratory for developing avant-garde aesthetics. The images are largely taken from the […]
What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
Theo Matejko’s dynamic and sensationalist style, which had a lasting influence on press graphic culture from the early 1920s onwards, was significantly influenced by cinematic views. The fact that he was commissioned by the UFA in 1924 to sketch the shooting of Murnau’s silent movie The Last Laugh (1924) underlines this connection. In this groundbreaking […]