Max Radler

Max Radler (1904-1971) is a name you won’t find in every Dictionary of Artists. Still, he was one most respectable representative of the New Objectivity. He was best known for his work as a caricaturist. His drawings are contemporary documents, and still provide accurate information about the social and political atmosphere that prevailed in the immediate postwar period and the beginning of the economic miracle years.
To become an artist meant a difficult journey for Max Radler. Existential concerns accompanied him almost the whole life. In the fifties, he had to work occasionally as a bricklayer or house painter.
The images of Max Radler, in which great enthusiasm for technology often finds its expression, tend to "magical realism", another name for New Objectiviy. Steam locomotives, excavators, stations, rails and bridges, are a common motif. He paints industrial landscapes with blast furnaces as well as shabby urban artisan districts. His figures are expressive, such as the "radiolistener" from 1930 or the many portraits of women, for which his wife usually served as a model.

1930 

1931 

Anti Nazi caricature, 1945

"Denazification machine", 1946