ANDOR WEININGER
FROM BAUHAUS TO CONCEPTUAL ART
Jiri Svestka & Katherine Janszky Michaelsen [Editors]
Jiri Svestka & Katherine Janszky Michaelsen [Editors]: ANDOR WEININGER: FROM BAUHAUS TO CONCEPTUAL ART. Düsseldorf: Kunstverein Fur Die Rheinlande Und Westfalen, 1991. First English-language edition. Quarto. Thick printed wrappers. 165 pp. 180 color illustrations. Numerous black and white text illustrations. Wrappers lightly worn, but a nearly fine copy.
9.5 x 11 softcover catalog with 165 pages and 180 color illustrations plus numerous black and white text illustrations. Contains several essays, interview, reference material; hte most detailed examination of the work and life of Andor Weininger with focus on his association with the Bauhaus. English-language edition published for the exhibition of the same name at the Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, September 29, 1991 to January 31, 1992.
Andor Weininger (Hungarian, 1899-1986) was a student of the Bauhaus whose stage designs were essential to theater experiments at the famous art and design school. In 1923 Weininger co-founded the legendary Bauhaus Jazz Band, widely popular in 1920s Germany for its brand of up-beat party music.
Weininger produced a fascinating body of work, mostly related to the avant-garde stage, attaining his greatest success with the Mechanical Stage-Review, a kind of moving abstract painting, and with his design for a spherical theatre. Weininger joined Kurt Schmidt and Georg Teltscher, in their abstract puppet shows developed from simple geometrical shapes and figures. The experiments combined De Stijl's construction of space, based on pure colors and geometrical shapes, with the theatrical concept of the Bauhaus, which increasingly gained importance from 1923 on under the strong influence of Oskar Schlemmer.
He and his wife and collaborator Eva Fernbach left Germany for Holland after the National Socialists came to power, where he engaged in the production of Surrealist works, eventually emigrating to Canada with Eva in 1951. In Toronto, he associated himself with the emergent Canadian abstract art scene, particularly with Jock Macdonald and William Ronald of Painters Eleven, producing a remarkably inventive and eclectic body of work, ranging from sketches of Lake Ontario to free, calligraphic abstract works, often employing complex, layered techniques of applying of pigment.
Despite the beauty of their surroundings in Etobicoke, and their pleasure in travelling in Ontario’s cottage country, the Weininger’s felt dissatisfied with their reception in Canada and what they saw as the conservatism of Toronto’s cultural scene. They also felt isolated from their Bauhaus friends and colleagues, many of whom were successful architects, artists and teachers living in the United States, while they languished in unemployment. Thus, Andor and Eva moved to New York City in 1958, where they lived and worked together until Andor’s death in 1986.