Walter Greengrass's linocut shows rugby players in an energetic tackle to claim the ball. The striped kit of both teams dazzles brilliantly against a stylised mowed green pitch with their white stripes adding to the sense of speed and movement. The malleable medium of linocut allowed Greengrass to create strong shapes and semi-abstract forms, notably the geometrical heads and simplified facial expressions of each player. 'Rugby' was one of several linocuts that he made in the 1930s, a period during which linocutting was popular with British printmakers and collectors alike. Sport was an especially inviting subject for linocutting: the potential to convey movement provided great impetus to artists, just as the action of moving machinery had inspired the Italian Futurists earlier in the twentieth century.
