Georg Scholz – Kakteen und Semaphore - Cactus and Signalmast (1923)

Louisiana Poster with the work, Kakteen und Semaphore - Cactus and Signalmast(1923), by the German artist, Georg Scholz, (1890-1945). The poster is published in 2022 in connection with Louisiana's exhibition about Germany in the 1920s, The Cold Eye. Cacti were popular in Germany during the period, and Scholtz emphasizes the stiffness of the plants here, which fits with the pictorial style of Neue Sachlichkeit—the distinctive artistic movement in Germany after the First World War.

Neue Sachlichkeit—the new matter-of-factness—becomes almost a cultural slogan in Germany in the 1920s, with its sober realism that ranges from the crass and satirical to the razor-sharp, almost clinical.

Several Neue Sachlichkeit artists are particularly interested in still life. Inspired by photography's recording reproduction, the painters borrow photography's imagery in a dialogue between the two media—and with a will to depict objects without filter, matter-of-factly and objectively. Objects are often seen in strange spaces that seem both empty and full of tension at the same time.

Cacti were very popular in 1920s Germany, where they were seen as the plants' answer to crystals: geometric, abstract and exotic. Georg Scholz emphasizes here precisely the stiffness of the cactus—in line with Neue Sachlichkeit's rigid modes of expression.