Arntz, Gerd

Date: 1900-1988

Gerd Arntz was a German modernist artist. He was a founder of the Cologne Progressives art movement and depicted working class struggles using woodcuts.  

He later worked at the Museum for Social and Economic Affairs in Vienna, Austria with Otto Neurath. Together, Neurath and Arntz developed the ISOTYPE method of visual statistics where complex information could be communicated in simple images. Arntz designed around 4000 different pictograms. The University of Reading’s Typography Department holds an ISOTYPE collection gifted to the University by Marie Neurath in 1971. 

Throughout his artistic career, Arntz fought for workers’ rights and criticised social inequality through art. He was influenced by Marxist and anarchist literature, and warned against Nazism when he emigrated to the Netherlands in 1934. 

The University Art Collection holds one artwork by Gerd Arntz.