Knud Stampe

Knud Stampe’s drawing Wall drawing (Väggteckning) was commissioned for the dining room of the workers union’s clubhouse adjacent to SKF’s factories in Gothenburg, where it has hung ever since. The drawing portrays several SKF employees and is allegedly one of the first depictions of female immigrant labor in Swedish art history. It also shows a so-called “time study man”—a person who timed the workers’ efforts at the conveyor belt in order to thereby calculate their wages according to the effort required. The time study men, who were also referred to as “bread thieves,” had just come onto the scene of working life in Sweden at the time the artwork was made. In accordance with the artist’s feelings of solidarity with the workers and their conditions, Stampe took the same hourly wage for his work on the piece as the workers on the factory floor received.