Oskar Schlemmer (4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

school. In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the workshop of sculpture. His most famous work is '' Triadisches Ballett'' (Triadic Ballet), which saw costumed actors transformed into

geometrical Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...

representations of the human body in what he described as a "party of form and colour".

Biography

Childhood and apprenticeships

Born in September 1888 in Swabia, Germany, Oskar Schlemmer was the youngest of six children. His parents, Carl Leonhard Schlemmer and Mina Neuhaus, both died around 1900 and the young Oskar lived with his sister and learned at an early age to provide for himself. By 1903 he was completely independent and supporting himself as an apprentice in an

inlay Inlay covers a range of techniques in sculpture and the decorative arts for inserting pieces of contrasting, often colored materials into depressions in a base object to form Ornament (art), ornament or pictures that normally are flush with th ...

workshop, moving on to another apprenticeship in

marquetry Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French ''marqueter'', to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to case fur ...

from 1905 to 1909. Oskar Schlemmer studied at the

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

(School of Applied Arts) in Stuttgart and won a scholarship to attend the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Stuttgart Academy of Fine Art), where he studied under the tutelage of

landscape painters A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...

Christian Landenberger Christian Adam Landenberger (7 April 1862, Ebingen - 13 February 1927, Stuttgart) was a German Impressionist painter and a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. He is especially known for his landscapes. Life He was the secon ...

and Friedrich von Keller starting in 1906. In 1910 Schlemmer moved to Berlin where he painted some of his first important works before returning to Stuttgart in 1912 as the master pupil of abstract artist

Adolf Hölzel Adolf Richard Hölzel (13 May 1853 – 17 October 1934) was a German painter. He began as a Realist, but later became an early promoter of various Modern styles, including Abstractionism. Biography Hölzel was born in Olmütz. His father was ...

, abandoning

impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

and moving toward cubism in his work. In 1914 Schlemmer was enlisted to fight on the Western Front in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

until he was wounded and moved to a position with the military

cartography Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an i ...

unit in Colmar, where he resided until returning to work under Hölzel in 1918. The doll-like figures he created in this period may have been a reaction to the wounded soldiers he saw in military hospitals during the war.

The Bauhaus years

In 1919 Schlemmer turned to sculpture and had an exhibition of his work at the gallery ''Der Sturm'' in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. At the same time he helped to update the curriculum at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Art with the appointment of new faculty and exhibitions of modern art. Among those involved were

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

and

Willi Baumeister Willi Baumeister (22 January 1889 – 31 August 1955) was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics. Life Born in ...

. After his marriage to Helena Tutein in 1920, Schlemmer was invited to Weimar by

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

to run the mural-painting and sculpture departments at the Bauhaus School before taking over the stagecraft workshop from

Lothar Schreyer Lothar Schreyer (1886 in Blasewitz – 1966 in Hamburg) was a German artist, writer, editor, stage designer and gallery owner. He was the first Master of the stagecraft workshop at the Bauhaus art school.Bauhaus100. Workshops. Stagecraft
Retrieved 6 December 2018 His complex ideas were influential, making him one of the most important teachers working at the school at that time. However, due to the heightened political atmosphere in Germany at the end of the 1920s, and in particular with the appointment of the radical communist architect

Hannes Meyer Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer (18 November 1889 – 19 July 1954) was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930. Early life Meyer was born in Basel, Switzerland, trained as a mason, and practiced as an architect ...

as Gropius's successor, in 1929 Schlemmer resigned his position and moved to take up a job at the Art Academy in Breslau. Schlemmer became known internationally 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 stylised faceless female figures, continued to be the predominant subject in his painting. While at Bauhaus, he developed the multidisciplinary course "Der Mensch (The human being)." In the human form he saw a measure that could provide a foothold in the disunity of his time. After using Cubism 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 Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and pat ...

in Essen. After leaving the Bauhaus in 1929, Schlemmer took a post at the Akademie in Breslau, where he painted his most celebrated work, the 'Bauhaustreppe', ('Bauhaus Stairway') (1932; Museum of Modern Art, New York). He was obliged to leave the Breslau Academy when it was closed down in the wake of the financial crisis following the

Wall Street Crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...

, and took up a professorship at Berlin's ''Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandete Kunst'' (United State School for Fine and Applied Art) in 1932, which he held until 1933 when he was forced to resign due to pressure from the Nazis. The Schlemmers then moved to Eichberg near the Swiss border, and then to Sehringen before his pictures were displayed at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich in 1937. The last ten years of his life were spent in a state of '

inner emigration Inner emigration (german: Innere Emigration, french: émigration intérieure) is a concept of an individual or social group who feels a sense of alienation from their country, its government, and its culture. This can be due to the inner emigrants' ...

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversm ...

, in his obituary of Schlemmer, wrote that it was 'as if a curtain of silence' had descended over him during this time. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe in

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and tow ...

, along with

and

Georg Muche Georg Muche (8 May 1895 – 26 March 1987) was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher. Early life and education Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, and grew up in the Rhön ...

, run by the philanthropist Kurt Herbert. 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 Schlemmer's final works before his death of a heart attack in the hospital at

Baden-Baden Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with Fra ...

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—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 also available. Along with Schlemmer's diary, his private letters to Otto Meyer and

have given valuable insight on what happened at the Bauhaus, especially his writings of how the staff and students responded to the many changes and developments at the school. Schlemmer's first retrospective in the United States was mounted by the

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

in 1986. In 2013, Dale Eisinger of ''Complex'' ranked ''Triadic Ballet'' the 23rd best work of performance art in history, writing, "A major signal of the Bauhuas movement, ''Triadic Ballet'' cemented its place in history as one of the first examples of multimedia performance. Schlemmer even created his costumes first, and then designed the choreography around them". On 4 September 2018, to commemorate what would have been his 130th birthday, Google released a

Google Doodle A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running an ...

celebrating him.

Controversy

In 2000, the artist's daughter Ute Jaina Schlemmer, who asserted that she owns the painting ''Bauhaus Stairway (Bauhaustreppe)'' or is owed money for it, obtained a court order to hold it for further investigation while it was on temporary loan from the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York to the

Neue Nationalgalerie The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its s ...

in Berlin. Before the injunction was served on the Neue Nationalgalerie, ''Bauhaus Stairway'' had already been packed and shipped to New York.

Art market

In 1998, Schlemmer's ''Idealistic Encounter'' (1928) was sold for $1.487 million at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in New York.

References

External links

Oskar Schlemmer The Official Site

* * ttps://johnpaulstonard.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/schlemmer-part-one.pdf Articles on ''Bauhaustreppe'' (1932) in The Burlington Magazine (July 2009; second part September 2010) by John-Paul Stonard
Quem foi Oskar Schlemmer e porque a Google lhe dedica um Doodle
(

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Schlemmer, Oskar 1888 births 1943 deaths 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists 19th-century German photographers 19th-century sculptors 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists 20th-century German photographers 20th-century sculptors Ballet designers Ballet librettists Bauhaus teachers German male sculptors German male painters German Army personnel of World War I German puppeteers German sculptors German theatre directors Artists from Stuttgart Photographers from Baden-Württemberg