Culture 1947

Hans Jelinek made this black and white print, called 'Culture', and it's like a world crammed into one frame. I’m imagining Jelinek, his hand firmly on the chisel, carefully carving out these stark contrasts. There’s a real tension between the sharp, angular lines of the industrial buildings and the more fluid, curving forms of the figures. He’s pushing and pulling at the wood, figuring out how to make these marks talk to each other. The way he's depicted the figures, especially the central one with that radio, it’s like they’re caught between the cogs of industry and the signals from the airwaves. It reminds me a little bit of some of the social commentary prints, artists trying to make sense of a changing world. You feel like he’s asking, what does it mean to be human in the middle of all this? Ultimately, it is the artist's vision which prevails and stays in conversation with us.