Although not very well known, the artist is affiliated with the Neue Sachlichkeit.
A European movement that found its origins in Dadaïsm and stretches after the the first worldtwar till the mid thirties,
with painters as Georges Grosz, Otto Dix, Christian Schad , to name the most important ones.
The Cactusus or cacti together with rubber fig trees were very popular in the twenties in Germany. The were prized for their exoticism.
Many artists were fascinated by their exoticism and geometric forms.
Xaver Fuhr and Alexander Kanoldt, painted these ficuses with the utmost meticulousness, in a refined style, that brings forth their neat structure.
Georg Scholz in Kakteen und Semaphore, a painting from 1923, valorises these plants with a stiffness and pictorial rigidity, typical for the “Neue Sachlichkeit”.