OSKAR SCHLEMMER
PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE, DRAWINGS
Karin von Maur
Karin von Maur: OSKAR SCHLEMMER: PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE, DRAWINGS. New York: Spencer A. Samuels & Company, 1969. Original edition. Square quarto. Japanese bound printed wrappers with tipped on color plate. Frontis. 180 pp. 8 color plates. 97 black and white images. Multiple paper stocks. Uncoated covers lightly worn but a very good or better copy of this uncommon catalog.
8.75 x 9.75 softcover catalog with 180 pages and 8 color plates and 97 black and white images of Oskar Schlemmer’s beautiful paintings, sculptures and drawings. Catalog for the exhibition from October 22 to November 20, 1969 at Spencer A. Samuels & Company in New York City.
Oskar Schlemmer [Germany, 1888 – 1943] developed his Triadisches Ballett during his tenure as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop. The stylized and wildly popular performance featured actors who transformed into geometrical shapes. The Ballett toured from 1922 until 1929 and helped spread the Bauhaus ethos throughout Europe.
After his experiences in the First World War, Schlemmer began to conceive the human body as a new artistic medium. He saw ballet and pantomime as free from the historical baggage of theatre and opera and thus able to present his ideas of choreographed geometry, man as dancer, transformed by costume, moving in space.
Schlemmer considered the movement of puppets and marionettes as aesthetically superior to that of humans, as it emphasised the artificial nature of every artistic medium.
Oskar Schlemmer was invited to Weimar in 1920 by Gropius to run the Bauhaus' sculpture department and stage workshop. He became internationally known with the premiere of his "Triadisches Ballett" in Stuttgart in 1922 . . . . Schlemmer spent the years 1928 to 1930 working on nine murals for the Folkwang Museum in Essen. After Gropius' resignation in 1929, Schlemmer also left the Bauhaus and accepted a post at the Akademie in Breslau. He was given a professorship at the "Vereinigte Staatsschulen" in Berlin in 1932, but the National Socialists forced him to resign in 1933. During the war, Schlemmer worked at the "Institut für Malstoffe" in Wuppertal . . . . He led a secluded life at the end of his career and made the small series of eighteen mystical "Fensterbilder" in 1942.