Gruppe Progressiver K?nstler

. German group of artists. It was founded in Cologne in 1925 by Franz Seiwert (1894-1933) and Heinrich Hoerle (1895-1936), with Otto Freundlich, Gerd Arntz (b 1900), Hans Schmitz (1896-1977), Augustin Tschinkel (b 1905) and the photographer August Sander. The group extended the programme of a 'proletarian' art that had characterized Seiwert and Hoerle's STUPID GROUP and their intervening work to include artists from other centres in the Rhineland and throughout Germany. They supported the revolutionary opposition to the ineffectual Weimar Republic, which they saw as a tool of repressive right-wing elements in the establishment. Following collaborations with the idealist and pacifist Berlin periodical Die Aktion, Seiwert and Hoerle started their own artistic publication, A bis Z, in October 1929, beginning the group's most fertile period. While the periodical attracted contributions from a broad cross-section of artists (including Raoul Haussmann, Jean H?lion and L?szl? Moholy-Nagy), the group favoured a stripped-down figurative style, whose schematized forms and abstract elements drew attention to the mechanization of contemporary existence. With echoes of Oskar Schlemmer's work and of Parisian Purism, some compositions also tended towards the coldness of Neue Sachlichkeit. Their critical political stance made them an immediate target for Nazi opposition. The group and periodical were ended in 1933, Seiwert died the same year, and Hoerle and Freundlich's work was subsequently designated as entartete Kunst.

See the Abbreviations for further details.