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FRANZ MASEREEL
Considered the greatest
twentieth-century master of the woodcut, and by many as the grandfather of the
graphic novel, Franz Masereel (1889-1972) was born in Belgium and lived
throughout Europe in the years before WWI.
Honing his craft as a graphic artist in various journals, Masereel
perfected an expressionist style influenced by contemporaries such as Delaunay,
Braque, and Marc. Additionally, his
literary influences can be seen in the numerous illustrations he did for
authors such as Thomas Mann, Stephen Sweig, and Emile Zola. Masereel emerged as a pacifist in WWI with
strong Communist sympathies—ideals embodied in his most ambitious works, his
so-called “novels” in woodcuts. These
works tell visual narratives about capitalism, man’s isolation in his modern
metropolis, the decadence of the bourgeois, and the rising might of the
proletariat. His most famous works are A Passionate Journey (1919), an
allegorical narrative of modern man’s existence, and The City, a “vision in woodcuts,” which documents the decline and
eventual fall of a Berlin-like metropolis.
Though he sided with no one political movement, his works were warmly
championed by Socialists and banned by the rising Nazi movement (forcing him to
flee Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation).
However, his humanity and sheer artistic appeal make it impossible to
read his works as propaganda. The
pioneering graphic novelist Will Eisner (The
Spirit, A Contract With God) cited him as a seminal influence on his work,
and one of the first true visionaries of the comic book form—though he never
viewed his work in this medium. His
influence has been further cited by notable comic book critic, Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), and undoubtedly
influenced Marjane Satrapi’s woodcut-style drawings in Persepolis I & II.
