Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 7 hours ago
"Mural for a Photographer" was painted 100 years ago by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, a founding member of the Cologne Progressives. This radical group of anti-fascist artists was active between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the rise of National Socialism in Germany in 1933.
Throughout the 1920s, the Cologne Progressives joined a wave of international leftist movements in the art world and developed their own vocabulary of figurative abstraction, creating easily legible work meant to be accessible to all. In "Mural for a Photographer," Seiwert applies this approach to bring the democratic spirit of photography and public murals to painting.
Hear Rita Kersting, deputy director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne, discuss Seiwert’s artistic practice, its political dimensions, and his relationship with the photographer for whom the painting is named: August Sander.
This program is presented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Chicago.
"Mural for a Photographer" was painted 100 years ago by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, a founding member of the Cologne Progressives. This radical group of anti-fascist artists was active between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the rise of National Socialism in Germany in 1933.
Throughout the 1920s, the Cologne Progressives joined a wave of international leftist movements in the art world and developed their own vocabulary of figurative abstraction, creating easily legible work meant to be accessible to all. In "Mural for a Photographer," Seiwert applies this approach to bring the democratic spirit of photography and public murals to painting.
Hear Rita Kersting, deputy director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne, discuss Seiwert’s artistic practice, its political dimensions, and his relationship with the photographer for whom the painting is named: August Sander.
This program is presented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Chicago.
