Frans Masereel
, Belgian, 1889-1972
Title
Bilder der GrossstadtDate1925
MediumWoodcut
Credit LinePresented, Brian Lalor Print Collection, 2014
Object numberNGI.2014.95
DescriptionBelgian-born Frans Masereel’s woodcuts and drawings sharply critique modern society, exploring the complicated and uncomfortable issues of the twentieth century. In the last years of World War I and throughout the 1920s Masereel created wordless graphic novels which addressed the growing moral ambiguities of the modern industrialized world, the oppression of the working class, what he saw as the lewdness of cinema, and the efforts of the individual to survive. The people in these prints are struggling, their expressions exaggerated. Buildings completely crowd them out, creating a feeling of suffocation.