Hans Baluschek belongs to the first generation of Berlin Realism. Beginning in the mid-1890s, he emerges as an attentive observer and critical commentator of life in Berlin.
Baluschek’s art deals with the achievements and deprivations of industrialised society. He highlights the effects of mechanisation of daily life and within the working environment; he makes the losers of modern life – the unemployed, the war cripples, old people and the sick– artistically presentable and comments on the moral transgressions of the bourgeoisie.