JOOST SCHMIDT
LEHRE UND ARBEIT AM BAUHAUS 1919 - 1932
Heinz Loew and Helene Nonne-Schmidt
Heinz Loew and Helene Nonne-Schmidt: JOOST SCHMIDT: LEHRE UND ARBEIT AM BAUHAUS 1919 - 1932. Dusseldorf: Edition Marzona, n. d. First edition. Text in German. Quarto. White card wrappers. Photographically printed dust jacket. 118 pp. 175 black and white photo illustrations. Silver jacket lightly rubbed and gouge to the top edge of the rear panel. A very good or better copy.
8.25 x 10.75 softcover book with 118 pages and 175 black and white photographic illustrations of Schmidt's work at the Bauhaus as artist, exhibition and graphic designer. The only monograph devoted to this Bauhaus designer, most of whose work was lost during the war. Highly recommended.
Joost Schmidt [1893 -1948] began his studies in 1910 at the Grand Ducal Saxonian School of Arts in Weimar and subsequently became a master student of Max Thedy. He received his diploma in painting in the 1913/14 winter semester. After military service and a period as a prisoner of war, he returned to Germany in 1918.
From 1919 to 1924/25, he trained in the workshop for stone and wood sculpture under Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer at the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. In 1921/22, his projects included the design and completion of carvings for the Sommerfeld House in Berlin and the design of a poster for the Weimar Bauhaus exhibition of 1923. In 1925, Schmidt accepted an offer from Walter Gropius to become a junior master at the Bauhaus Dessau after passing the journeyman's examination of the Chamber of Crafts Weimar.
That same year, Schmidt married the Bauhaus student Helene Nonne. At the Bauhaus Dessau, Joost taught calligraphy for the preliminary course [1925 - 1932] and directed the sculpture workshop [1928 - 1930], and the advertising, typography and printing workshop and the affiliated photography department [1928 - 1932]. From 1929 to 1930, he was also a life-drawing teacher, teaching life and figure drawing.
In 1934, in collaboration with Walter Gropius, Schmidt designed the "non-iron metals" section of the propaganda exhibition Deutsches Volk – Deutsche Arbeit [German people -- German work]. He opened a studio in Berlin in the same year and also worked as a draughtsman/illustrator of maps. In 1935, he accepted a teaching position at the private art school Kunst und Werk, directed by Hugo Haring. However, he was prevented from practicing his profession due to past affiliation with the Bauhaus. He subsequently worked as a typographer for the publishers Alfred Metzner Verlag and others.
After the war, Max Taut appointed him as a professor at the School of Art in Berlin where he took over the preliminary course for architects. In 1946, he collaborated with other members of the Bauhaus on the design of the exhibition Berlin Plant/Erster Bericht, the first exhibition on the city's plans for reconstruction, held in the Berlin City Palace.
Egidio Marzona has assembled the world's foremost collection of works on paper documenting the revolutionary efforts of the Bauhaus. Marzona is also a well-known publisher of books on Russian Constructivism, Futurism, De Stijl, Dadaism, and a host of other movements and figures of the 20th-century avant-garde.