FOTOGRAFI 1930
International Udstilling Samlet af Münchner Werkbund Sommeren 1930
Vilhelm Slomann [introduction]
Vilhelm Slomann [introduction]: FOTOGRAFI 1930 [International Udstilling Samlet af Münchner Werkbund Sommeren 1930]. København: Kunstindustrimuseet, 1930. First edition. Text in Danish. Slim 12mo. Printed photo illustrated stapled wrappers. 44 pp. 10 halftone plates. Exhibition checklist. Photocollage cover by Danish Jonals & Co. Pencil checkmarks to margins of a few artists' listings, otherwise interior unmarked and very clean. Tiny rust mark to front panel. Edges lightly worn. A very good to nearly fine copy. Rare.
4.5 x 6.5 softcover catalog of the Danish edition of 'Film und Foto' (Fifo) exhibition catalog, with 44 pages and 10 halftone plates. Subtitled "International Exhibition assembled by Münchner Werkbund Summer 1930," this catalog is from the travelling Film und Foto exhibition that originated in Stuttgart in May 1929, that included approximately 1,000 works from Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
Includes images by Dr. Rudolf Loher, Hans Finsler, Hanna Sewald, H. V. Stwolinski, Dr. M. Hürlimann, A. Klopfenstein and E. Gyger, Moegle, Kesting, Emmanuel Sougez, and Hildergard Heise.
The exhibition FIFO, organised in 1929 by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart, is considered the first great exhibition of modern European and American photography. It was seen as a showcase for the artistic ideas of the New Vision. Shortly before the opening, in the autumn of 1928, László Moholy-Nagy and Sigfried Giedion, who were in charge of the main room in the exhibition, introduced a change in the initial programme and turned it into a representation of the New Vision.
Including 1,200 works by 191 artists belonging to the world of cinema, painting, photography and the visual arts in general, the exhibition can be considered the culmination of experimental production realised with these means. In Germany it was seen as a retrospective of these ideas before the rigid aesthetics of the Nazi regime were imposed. In fact, soon after authors such as László Moholy-Nagy immigrated to the United States.
The selection of authors was made by several artists: while Moholy-Nagy was one of the selectors of European photographers, Edward Weston was in charge of the American selection. Artists included Berenice Abbott, Willi Baumeister, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Alexander Rodchenko, Edward Steichen, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Sheeler and Brett Weston, among others. The selected works were characterised by unexpected angles, such as the photographs taken by Willi Ruge from a parachute, the use of photomontage, etc. After seeing the exhibition, the critic Franz Roh wrote an essay entitled Foto-Auge, asserting that photography had changed in a definitive manner. In the same year, the exhibition travelled to Zurich, Berlin, Danzig, Copenhagen and Vienna, and in 1931 it was presented in Tokyo and Osaka.
Vilhelm Slomann was a writer and museum professional, convincingly and successfully part of mainstream art history: director of the Copenhagen Kunstindustrimuseet (Danish Museum of Art and Design) from 1923 to 1949, he published articles on the history of furniture and applied art in Danish, British and German journals, as well as the book Bizarre Designs in Silks. Trade and Tradition in 1953.