Context: Bauhaus

You can find more information about this work by Oskar Schlemmer in our KB Kosmos.

Transcript of the audio

What did you see when you entered this room? A drawing? A sculpture?
Oskar Schlemmer’s “Wire figure Homo with back figure on hand” (1930/31) presents itself like a three-dimensional line in space.

Schlemmer, the visionary director of the Bauhaus stage, created this “metal composition” from wires of different thicknesses. What may look more like a drawing from a distance reveals itself to be a three-dimensional spatial drawing on closer inspection. The wire figure floats a few centimeters in front of the wall and its shadows create a lively interplay between surface and space.

Oskar Schlemmer was not alone in his search for an “artificial figure” that reconciles man and technology. His colleague at the Bauhaus stage, Xanti Schawinsky, developed similar ideas in parallel. When Schlemmer published his groundbreaking essay “Man and Art Figure” in 1925, Schawinsky was already experimenting with his “Spectodrama”, a theatrical form that combined “color and form, movement and light, sound and word”.

Both artists were looking for a new body-image language in an increasingly technologized world. While Schlemmer shaped his figure in wire, Schawinsky brought it to life as a “tap machine” in improvised theater pieces – a dialogue between man and machine.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Transcription of the audio below.

Video of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation on the light-space modulator

Transcription of the audio

Imagine you are standing in the spotlight on a stage. Light falls through colored filters, casting geometric shadows on the wall. This interplay of light and form can also be found in László Moholy-Nagy’s “Composition K XVII”.

The work, created in 1923, shows geometric shapes in different colors that overlap and penetrate each other. Their clear contours and exciting spatial references keep the eye in constant motion – a visual dynamic that Moholy-Nagy deliberately staged.

“The immanent spirit seeks: Light, light! Finding the detour of technology: Pigment”The quote poses the question of why artists have to paint with color in order to be able to show light. As a teacher at the Bauhaus from 1923, he played a key role in shaping the school’s transition from Expressionism to Constructivism.

His fascination with light culminated in the “Light-Space Modulator”, a kinetic, i.e. moving sculpture, which he developed between 1922 and 1930. Made of shiny metal, plastic and glass, this “light prop”, as the artist called it, creates fascinating plays of light and shadow through movement and light sources – a three-dimensional development of the principles that we already recognize in “Composition K XVII”.

Both works show how Moholy-Nagy overcame the boundaries of traditional art and found new ways to create with light as a fundamental medium. His inclusion of space in his artistic work can also be found in Xanti Schawinsky’s works.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

The “Bauhaus picture series” by Kurt Kranz, also known as Leporello, is a work that captures many basic ideas of the Bauhaus in a visual sequence, i.e. a sequence of pictures. It was created in 1930-31 during his time at the Bauhaus Dessau. The work shows the innovative combination of art, design and film that characterized this school.

The fanfold consists of a sequence of drawings that look like a filmstrip. Kranz developed a kind of “visual narrative” here, in which geometric shapes and colors gradually change and interact with each other. Follow the series from start to finish: it begins with simple lines and shapes that gradually become more complex patterns and structures. Kranz experiments with repetitions, variations and transformations – principles that were also central to Bauhaus teachings.

What is particularly exciting is that Kranz originally conceived this sequence as the basis for an abstract color film. The folding of the fanfold allows the images to be viewed both individually and as a whole – similar to a film that contains both individual images and a flowing movement. This approach was visionary and shows the influence of teachers such as László Moholy-Nagy, who himself worked with experimental films.

The work was created with watercolor, gouache and pen and ink on paper, mounted on canvas.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Transcription of the audio at the bottom.

Additional information:

The Cabinet of the Abstract – Art you can touch (1927)

Imagine entering a room where the walls move with you – where art is not just looked at, but experienced. This was precisely El Lissitzky’s revolutionary idea for his “Cabinet of the Abstract”, which he created in 1927 in what was then the Provinzialmuseum Hannover.
While today we go through interactive exhibitions as a matter of course, Lissitzky’s concept was groundbreaking at the time. “We destroy the wall as a resting place for her paintings,” he explained. With slatted walls and moving elements, he invited visitors to become active themselves – similar to the way we swipe our fingers across touchscreens today.
In this unique space, he presented works by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Walter Dexel and other modern artists. The room itself became a work of art that changed with every visit.
In 1937, the “Cabinet of Abstract Art” was destroyed by the National Socialists as part of the “Degenerate Art Campaign”. The cabinet was reconstructed 30 years later. Today it can be experienced at the Sprengel Museum Hannover – a place where you can still see today how a 100-year-old idea has changed the way we look at art forever.

You can find out more in this taz article.

Transcription of the audio

Clear, simple forms combined into graphic constructions: This is Walter Dexel’s “Portfolio 1” from the years 1926 to 1930. It shows Dexel’s mastery in designing according to the Bauhaus guidelines.

Walter Dexel, born in Munich in 1890, shaped the art scene of his time as an art historian and director of the Jena Kunstverein from 1916 to 1928. In this position, he initially organized exhibitions of Expressionists and Dadaists, and later also maintained close contacts with the nearby Bauhaus in Weimar. His typographic designs shaped the appearance of the Kunstverein and testified to his flair for clear, functional aesthetics.

The works in “Portfolio 1”, such as “Figuration on Black” or “Composition with Two Red Discs”, feature the reduction to basic geometric forms, clear lines and surfaces and the use of primary colors typical of the Bauhaus.
Follow the play with horizontal and vertical lines, which are broken up by isolated diagonals and circles!

The quality of his constructive works earned Dexel the honor of being represented in El Lissitzky’s famous “Cabinet of the Abstract” in the then Provinzialmuseum Hannover (today’s Landesmuseum) in 1927 – a revolutionary exhibition space specially designed for the presentation of abstract art.

Dexel’s work exemplifies the connection between art and everyday life that the Bauhaus sought to achieve. His clear formal language was later also used in his work as a commercial artist and designer – in keeping with the Bauhaus idea of blurring the boundaries between art and life.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

I’m sure you’ve experienced this before: how different the color of the sky can look depending on the color of the buildings in front of it. Or that an orange shirt with dark blue trousers seems to glow particularly brightly. It was precisely this phenomenon of color perception that fascinated Josef Albers throughout his life.

In his famous series of works “Homage to the Square”, which he worked on from 1950 until his death in 1976, Albers experimented with nested squares. He created over 1000 such works during this time – a series of scientific experiments on the optical effect of colors.

Like a researcher in a laboratory, Albers applied his paints directly from the tube with a palette knife, layer by layer, methodically. As a result, he discovered how the same color can appear completely different depending on the surroundings – warmer, colder, closer or further away.

In 1967 he published the graphic portfolio exhibited here with 12 screen prints. A selection of his research studies, so to speak.

Albers acquired the foundations for these color studies at the Bauhaus, where Xanti Schawinsky and Albers met. This friendship would later become significant when they both had to flee from the National Socialists. Albers emigrated to the USA as early as 1933. Three years later, he was able to help Xanti and Irene Schawinsky escape to the USA and find him a job at Black Mountain College.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)