Among the earliest works of Swiss painter Rudolf Maeglin (1892–1971) are portraits of dye-factory workers in his native Basel. In the 1930s and ’40s, he painted these Farbarbeiter (literally “color workers”) with their lips tinted a pale green or bare chests stained a brilliant red by the toxic pigments they produced. With these fine-featured workers rendered crudely in oil on canvas and on board, Maeglin developed a characteristic style—simple shapes, bright colors, flat perspective—in which he painted Basel’s laborers and construction sites until his death. The recent Maeglin retrospective

Among the earliest works of Swiss painter Rudolf Maeglin (1892–1971) are portraits of dye-factory workers in his native Basel. In the 1930s and ’40s, he painted these Farbarbeiter (literally “color workers”) with their lips tinted a pale green or bare chests stained a brilliant red by the toxic pigments they produced. With these fine-featured workers rendered crudely in oil on canvas and on board, Maeglin developed a characteristic style—simple shapes, bright colors, flat perspective—in which he painted Basel’s laborers and construction sites until his death. The recent Maeglin retrospective

Among the earliest works of Swiss painter Rudolf Maeglin (1892–1971) are portraits of dye-factory workers in his native Basel. In the 1930s and ’40s, he painted these Farbarbeiter (literally “color workers”) with their lips tinted a pale green or bare chests stained a brilliant red by the toxic pigments they produced. With these fine-featured workers rendered crudely in oil on canvas and on board, Maeglin developed a characteristic style—simple shapes, bright colors, flat perspective—in which he painted Basel’s laborers and construction sites until his death. The recent Maeglin retrospective