Platzende Granate (exploding grenade)

A grenade explodes over a helpless figure who is thrown back by the force of the explosion. This image was published in Die Aktion, 1915, p.307. Die Aktion (The Action) (1911-1932), edited by Franz Pfemfert, was a socially critical avant-garde periodical which published original prints alongside poetry and literature. After 1918 the periodical became more political and adopted a revolutionary communist outlook. Segal was primarily a painter but he began experimenting with the woodcut medium in 1910 after its revival and use by the German Expressionists. This work is from a series of anti-war woodcuts Segal produced in 1915. They are the most expressionistic of Segal's work, emphasising the violence of war. The black and white contrasts, aggressive lines and the raw grain of the wood, produce a powerful statement on the violent and destructive powers of war. Arthur Segal was born in 1875 in Jassy, Romania. His studies led him to Munich, Paris and Italy, and by 1904 Segal had emigrated to Berlin where he exhibited with members of the two leading German Expressionist groups; Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter as well as the Berlin Secession. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Segal's life and art took a radical turn. To avoid returning to Romania to fight, Segal moved with his family to neutral Switzerland where he remained until 1919, exhibiting with Arp and the Dada circle in Zurich's infamous Cabaret Voltaire. Segal returned to Berlin in 1920 and subsequently became director of the Novembergruppe with whom he exhibited until 1932. Because of his Jewish heritage and his "degenerate" artistic sensibilities, the artist was prevented from exhibiting in Germany and left in 1933, emigrating first to Spain, then settling in London where he died in 1944.