Oskar Schlemmer (September 4, 1888 – April 13, 1943) was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, sculptor and
designerA designer is a person who designs something. Perhaps the broadest definition is that provided by psychologist Herbert Simon: 'Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.'...
associated with the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture. His most famous work is "
Triadisches BallettTriadisches Ballett is a ballet developed by Oskar Schlemmer. It premiered in Stuttgart, on 30 September 1922, with music composed by Paul Hindemith, after formative performances dating back to 1916, with the performers Elsa Hotzel and Albert Berger...
," in which the actors are transfigured from the normal to
geometricalGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
shapes. Also in Slat Dance and Treppenwitz, the performers' costumes make them into living sculpture, as if part of the scenery.
Born in September of 1888 in
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Oskar Sclemmer was the youngest of six children.
Oskar Schlemmer (September 4, 1888 – April 13, 1943) was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, sculptor and
designerA designer is a person who designs something. Perhaps the broadest definition is that provided by psychologist Herbert Simon: 'Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.'...
associated with the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture. His most famous work is "
Triadisches BallettTriadisches Ballett is a ballet developed by Oskar Schlemmer. It premiered in Stuttgart, on 30 September 1922, with music composed by Paul Hindemith, after formative performances dating back to 1916, with the performers Elsa Hotzel and Albert Berger...
," in which the actors are transfigured from the normal to
geometricalGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
shapes. Also in Slat Dance and Treppenwitz, the performers' costumes make them into living sculpture, as if part of the scenery.
Childhood and apprenticeships
Born in September of 1888 in
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Oskar Sclemmer was the youngest of six children. His parents, Carl Leonhard Schlemmer and Mina Neuhaus, both died around 1900 and the young Oskar learned at an early age to provide for himself. By 1903 he was completely independent and supporting himself as an apprentice in an
inlayInlay is a decorative technique of inserting pieces of contrasting, often coloured materials into depressions in a base object to form patterns or pictures that normally are flush with the matrix. In a wood matrix, inlays commonly use wood veneers, but other materials like shells, mother-of-pearl,...
workshop, moving on to another apprenticeship in
marquetryMarquetry is the craft of covering a structural carcass with pieces of veneer forming decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to free-standing pictorial panels...
from 1905 to 1909.
Oskar Schlemmer studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule as well as the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
under the tutelage of landscape painters Christian Landenberger and Friedrich von Keller. In 1910 Schlemmer moved to Berlin where he painted some of his most famous works before returning to Stuttgart in 1912 as
Adolf HölzelAdolf Hölzel was a German artist/painter. His style developed from Impressionism to expressive modernism.- Biography :...
's master pupil. In 1914 Schlemmer was enlisted to fight on the
Western FrontWestern Front was a term used during the First and Second World Wars to describe the "contested armed frontier" between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West...
in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
until a pair of wounds landed him a position with the military
cartographyCartography is the study and practice of making geographical maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of cartography are to:*Set the map's...
unit in
ColmarColmar is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.It is the capital of the department...
, where he resided until returning to work under Hölzel in 1918.
The Bauhaus years
In 1919 Schlemmer turned to the art of sculpture and had an exhibit of his work at the Gallery Der Sturm in Berlin. After his marriage to Helena Tutein in 1920, Schlemmer was invited to Weimar by
Walter GropiusWalter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
to run the mural-painting and sculpture departments at the Bauhaus School before heading up the theater workshop in 1923. His complex ideas were influential, making him one of the most important teachers working at the school at that time. However, with the rise of the Nazis at the end of the 1920s, Schlemmer's work was seen as degenerate and he was dismissed from his post in 1929.
Schlemmer became internationally known with the première of his 'Triadisches Ballett' in Stuttgart in 1922. His work for the Bauhaus and his preoccupation with the theatre are an important factor in his work, which deals mainly with the problematic of the figure in space. People, typically a stylised female figure, continued to be the predominant subject in his painting. After using
CubismCubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as "Analytic Cubism", was both radical and influential as...
as a springboard for his structural studies, Schlemmer's work became intrigued with the possibilities of figures and their relationship to the space around them, for example 'Egocentric Space Lines' (1924). Schlemmer's characteristic forms can be seen in his sculptures as well as his paintings. Yet he also turned his attention to stage design, first getting involved with this in 1929, executing settings for the opera 'Nightingale' and the ballet 'Renard' by Igor Stravinsky.
Life and death under the Third Reich
From 1928 to 1930, Schlemmer worked on nine murals for a room in the Folkwang Museum in
EssenEssen is a city in the central part of the Ruhr Area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Located on the Ruhr River, its population of approximately 579,000 makes it either the 7th- or 8th-largest-city in Germany...
. After leaving the Bauhaus, Schlemmer took a post at the Akademie in Breslau then a professorship at Berlin's Vereinigte Staatsschulen 1932, which he held until 1933 when he was forced to resign once again due to pressure from the Nazis. The Schlemmers then moved to
EichbergEichberg may refer to:* Eichberg, St. Gallen, Switzerland* Eichberg, Austria, a town in Styria, Austria* Eichberg Tower, an observation tower near Emmendingen, GermanyEichberg is the surname of:...
near the Swiss border, and then to Sehringen before his pictures were displayed at the National Socialist exhibition of "Degenerate Art."
During the World Warr II Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe in
Wuppertal||-||}Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the Wupper river south of the Ruhr area. Population 361,333 ....
along with
Willi BaumeisterWilli Baumeister was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.- Life :Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service...
and Georg Muche, and then at a paint factory in
Wuppertal||-||}Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the Wupper river south of the Ruhr area. Population 361,333 ....
. The factory offered Schlemmer the opportunity to paint without the fear of persecution. His series of eighteen small, mystical paintings entitled "Fensterbilder" ("Window Pictures," 1942) were painted while looking out the window of his house and observing neighbors engaged in their domestic tasks. These were Sclemmer's final works before his death in the hospital as
Baden-BadenBaden-Baden is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the western foothills of the Black Forest, on the banks of the Oos River, in the region of Karlsruhe.- History :The German word 'Baden' translates as 'to bath/bathe'...
in 1943.
Legacy
Schlemmer's ideas on art were complex and challenging even for the progressive Bauhaus movement. His work, nevertheless, was widely exhibited in both Germany and outside the country. His work was a rejection of pure abstraction, instead retaining a sense of the human, though not in the emotional sense but in view of the physical structure of the human. He represented bodies as architectural forms, reducing the figure to a rhythmic play between convex, concave and flat surfaces. And not just of its form, he was fascinated by every movement the body could make; trying to capture it in his work. As well as leaving a large body of work behind, Schlemmer art theories have also been published. A comprehensive book of his letters and diary entries, from 1910 to 1943, is available as well.
Along with Schlemmer's
diaryA diary is a record with discreet entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries undertaken for institutional purposes play a role in many aspects of human civilization, including government records , business ledgers and military records...
, his private letters to
Otto MeyerOtto Meyer was a Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen SS during World War II who was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oakleaves....
and
Willi BaumeisterWilli Baumeister was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.- Life :Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service...
have given valuable insight on what happened at the Bauhaus; especially his writings of how the
staffEmployment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct...
and
studentThe word student is etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb studēre, meaning "to direct one's zeal at"; hence a student could be described as "one who directs zeal at a subject"...
s responded to the many changes and developments at the school.
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