Baumgarte Products Are Shipped around the World (Loading), 1953
Red chalk, India ink, and gouache on cream-colored cardboard, 27,5 x 35,3 cm
Artwork for the January page of the 1954 Baumgarte Ironworks calendar

Baumgarte Products Are Shipped around the World (Loading), 1953

Ruth Baumgarte produced this drawing as the design for the January page of a calendar commissioned by Eisenwerke Baumgarte ironworks that was to appear each year from 1952 on. It shows a port with a crane and a ship in the background onto which a boiler is being loaded. In the left of the foreground are two workers, and on the right, we can see crates, sacks, and the end of a railway track. Our view of the bare back of the first worker impressively captures the difficulty and scale of the loading effort. He is bending right into the picture, drawing our eyes to the boiler that is hanging from the crane. The man is actually hardly visible: his hands and arms, bent right back, appear symbolically to increase the forces exerted on the boiler. The worker's pose also draws the observer into the heart of the action.

This image is a far cry from the documentary realism of the black-and-white photographs of machinery that are featured in the same calendar. Baumgarte skillfully demonstrates how reducing the image to just a few key elements – a worker's back, a worker's head, and a small selection of other items – and only three colors can heighten intensity of the scene, thereby paying artistic homage to the men's heavy labor.