Augustin Tschinkel (1905,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

– 1983,

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

artist active with the Figurative Constructivist art movement. Tschinkel went to Cologne, Germany to attend the '' Pressa'' exhibition there. He was working with Ladislav Sutnar who was responsible for the Czech pavilion there. While in Cologne, he took the opportunity to meet with

Franz Seiwert Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (March 9, 1894 – July 3, 1933) was a German painter and sculptor in a constructivist style. He was also politically active as a communist making significant contributions, both graphic and theoretical to ''Die Aktion' ...

, who he was generally familiar with from reading left-wing art/politics journal ''

Die Aktion ''Die Aktion'' ("The Action") was a German literary and political magazine, edited by Franz Pfemfert and published between 1911 and 1932 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf; it promoted literary Expressionism and stood for left-wing politics. To begin with, '' ...

'' to which Seiwert contributed both images and theoretical articles. He joined the Cologne Progressives, the art group that Seiwert had founded. He adopted their method of black and white images which were easy to mass-produce for leaflets and posters which they distributed to a largely working-class audience with little consideration for official constraints on where they put their posters. These they called "social graphics" and Tschinkel became the sole proponent of this artistic form in

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

. In 1929 Augustin followed fellow member

Gerd Arntz Gerd Arntz (11 December 1900, in Remscheid – 4 December 1988, in The Hague) was a German Modernist artist renowned for his black and white woodcuts. A core member of the Cologne Progressives, he was also a council communist. The Cologne Progres ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

to work for the

Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Museum for Social and Economic Affairs) is a museum located in Margareten, Vienna. History Following World War I, Vienna experienced extreme devastation and deprivation which radicalized architects and designe ...

. He was also accompanied by

Peter Alma Peter Alma (18 January 1886 Medan – 23 May 1969 Amsterdam) was a Dutch artist. Alma was born in Medan, Indonesia and attended the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 1904. On the recommendation of Franz Seiwert he was employed by the Gesellsch ...

. Here, he became involved in the development of the

Vienna Method Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) is a method of showing social, technological, biological, and historical connections in pictorial form. It consists of a set of standardized and abstracted pictorial symbols to repres ...

, which emerged thanks to the combination of

Otto Neurath Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath (; 10 December 1882 – 22 December 1945) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. He was also the inventor of the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics and an innovator in mu ...

's approach to visual education and the approach of the Figurative Constructivists. The Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum was suppressed by the Austro-fascists following their defeat of the Schutzbund in the Austrian Civil War in February 1934. Tschinkel returned to Czechoslovakia and was employed as a graphic consultant for the state publishing house. Here he applied the Vienna method to the production of educational and statistical material. He also linked up with Sutnar again. During the 1950s, he maintained correspondence with

Raoul Hausmann Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tschinkel, Augustin 1905 births 1983 deaths Czech male painters Constructivism (art) 20th-century Czech painters Artists from Prague 20th-century Czech male artists