Hoppla! by Jan Hovers

Hoppla!
2023 - linocut | original size 21×21 cm | 4 print runs

Hoppla! is a contemporary ode to the artistic heyday of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) - a short but extraordinarily fertile time within the European interwar period. During those years of freedom and confusion, unprecedented creativity flourished in Germany. Expressionism found its way into film, painting, literature, music and theatre. Artists sought new forms to depict a torn society, balancing between idealism, satire and despair.

Films such as Der blaue Engel by Josef von Sternberg and Die Dreigroschenoper by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill showed a world adrift: seductive and at the same time disconcerting portraits of a time on the verge of decay. Painters like Otto Dix and George Grosz exposed the moral bankruptcy of urban society with sharp lines and biting irony, while Käthe Kollwitz showed human vulnerability in sober contours. In Berlin, the night resounded: cabarets, jazz, theatre and the melancholic singing of Marlene Dietrich formed the backdrop of a new modern era.

That atmosphere - the contrast between light and dark, between bravura and fragility - is the starting point of Hoppla! The four print runs in warm ochres and deep browns evoke the glow of theatre light and the smoky backdrops of a 1920s revue. The angular lines and stylised faces refer to the graphics and poster art of the time, where every line carries meaning and every shadow plays a part in the drama.

Thus Hoppla! is not a nostalgic reconstruction, but a contemporary representation of a period when art explored the limits of freedom - until the voice of expressionism was stifled in 1933.