Die Zigarre (The Cigar)

The zeppelin-shaped silhouette of Oskar Nerlinger’s cigar pushes into the center of the composition. A spotlight illuminates the logo of Loeser and Wolff, one of the largest tobacco companies in Europe. Nerlinger helped found Die Abstrakten, a German collective of avant-garde artists that included Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy. Nerlinger was included in the landmark 1929 Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, which surveyed how still and moving image technology had reshaped almost all aspects of modern visual culture. The exhibition trav-eled in 1931 to Tokyo and Osaka, where it made a lasting impact on Japanese artists.