{"id":9852,"date":"2025-02-18T12:16:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T11:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/programm\/ausstellungen\/bauhaus-context\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T13:40:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T11:40:06","slug":"bauhaus-context","status":"publish","type":"ausstellungen","link":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/exhibitions\/bauhaus-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Context: Bauhaus"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":10361,"template":"","class_list":["post-9852","ausstellungen","type-ausstellungen","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"blocks_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"text_sans_gross","text":"[video width=\"960\" height=\"506\" mp4=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/kh_einzelclip_sammlung_01-540p.mp4\"][\/video]"},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_sans_gross_zweispaltig","text":"Media guide<\/a>\n\nArt A to Z<\/a>","text2":"Press material<\/a>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_sans_gross","text":"Based on the exhibition \"Play Life Illusion. Xanti Schawinsky\", the collection exhibition shows works by artists in whose environment Schawinsky moved during his time at the Bauhaus<\/a> and at Black Mountain College<\/a> in America. In addition, works are also on display that refer to works and concepts by selected Bauhaus artists and illustrate their impact to this day.\n\nThe Bauhaus, the renowned German art school that existed from 1919 to 1933, is still regarded today as a place of experimentation that combined different media and art forms. The central considerations of the Bauhaus artists revolved around the artistic interplay of light, form, color, space and movement.\n\nWith works by Josef Albers, Walter Dexel, Gottfried J\u00e4ger, Kurt Kranz, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer and interviews with Xanti Schawinsky's contemporary witnesses<\/i>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"zwischentitel","title":"<\/a>Media guide"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_accordion","akkordeon_default_open":false,"akkordeon":[{"titel":"Lines in the room. Oskar Schlemmer: Wire figure Homo, 1930\/31","inhalte":"[audio mp3=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/20250315-20250615_Schawinsky_Medienguide_NK_Schlemmer.mp3\"][\/audio]\n\n<\/a>You can find more information about this work by Oskar Schlemmer in our KB Kosmos<\/a>.\n\n\u00a0\n\nTranscript of the audio\n\nWhat did you see when you entered this room? A drawing? A sculpture?\nOskar Schlemmer's \"Wire figure Homo with back figure on hand\" (1930\/31) presents itself like a three-dimensional line in space.\n\nSchlemmer, the visionary director of the Bauhaus stage<\/a>, 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.\n\nOskar Schlemmer was not alone in his search for an \"artificial figure\" that reconciles man and technology. His colleague at the Bauhaus stage<\/a>, Xanti Schawinsky, developed similar ideas in parallel. When Schlemmer published his groundbreaking essay \"Man and Art Figure<\/a>\" in 1925, Schawinsky was already experimenting with his \"Spectodrama\", a theatrical form that combined \"color and form, movement and light, sound and word\".\n\nBoth 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\"<\/a> in improvised theater pieces - a dialogue between man and machine.\n\n\u00a0\n\nText: Matthias Albrecht\nAudio by: Nadine Kleinken\nRecording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)"},{"titel":"L\u00e0szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy: Composition K XVII, 1923","inhalte":"[audio mp3=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/20250315-20250615_Schawinsky_Medienguide_MA-Moholy.mp3\"][\/audio]\n\nTranscription of the audio below.\n\nVideo of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation on the light-space modulator\n\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VQL0Gm4JeC4\n\n\u00a0\n\nTranscription of the audio\n\nImagine 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 L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy's \"Composition K XVII\".\n\nThe 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.\n\n\"The immanent spirit seeks: Light, light! Finding the detour of technology: Pigment\"<\/i>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<\/a> from 1923, he played a key role in shaping the school's transition from Expressionism<\/a> to Constructivism.\n\nHis 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\".\n\nBoth 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.\n\n\u00a0\n\nText: Matthias Albrecht\nAudio by: Matthias Albrecht\nRecording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)"},{"titel":"A movie? Kurt Kranz: Bauhaus picture series, called \"Leporello\", 1930\/31","inhalte":"[audio mp3=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/20250315-20250615_Schawinsky_Medienguide_NK_Kranz.mp3\"][\/audio]\n\nThe \"Bauhaus picture series\" by Kurt Kranz, also known as Leporello<\/em>, is a work that captures many basic ideas of the Bauhaus<\/a> 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.\n\nThe 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.\n\nWhat 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 L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy<\/a>, who himself worked with experimental films.\n\nThe work was created with watercolor, gouache<\/a> and pen and ink on paper, mounted on canvas.\n\n\u00a0\n\nText: Matthias Albrecht\nAudio by: Nadine Kleinken\nRecording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)"},{"titel":"Construction and clarity. Walter Dexel: Portfolio 1, 1926-30","inhalte":"[audio mp3=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/20250315-20250615_Schawinsky_Medienguide_MA_Dexel.mp3\"][\/audio]\n\nTranscription of the audio at the bottom.\n\nAdditional information:\n\nThe Cabinet of the Abstract - Art you can touch (1927)\n\nImagine 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.\nWhile 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<\/em>,\" 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.\nIn 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.\nIn 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.\n\nYou can find out more in this taz article.<\/a>\n\n\u00a0\n\nTranscription of the audio\n\nClear, 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<\/a> guidelines.\n\nWalter 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<\/a> and Dadaists<\/a>, 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.\n\nThe 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.\nFollow the play with horizontal and vertical lines, which are broken up by isolated diagonals and circles!\n\nThe 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.\n\nDexel'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.\n\n\u00a0\n\nText: Matthias Albrecht\nAudio by: Matthias Albrecht\nRecording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)"},{"titel":"How do colors interact with each other? Josef Albers: Homage to the Square, 1950-1976","inhalte":"[audio mp3=\"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/20250315-20250615_Schawinsky_Medienguide_NK-Albers-Homage.mp3\"][\/audio]\n\nI'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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nLike 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.\n\nIn 1967 he published the graphic portfolio exhibited here with 12 screen prints<\/a>. A selection of his research studies, so to speak.\n\nAlbers acquired the foundations for these color studies at the Bauhaus<\/a>, 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<\/a>.\n\n\u00a0\n\nText: Matthias Albrecht\nAudio by: Nadine Kleinken\nRecording and editing: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digital Museum Practice Kunsthalle Bielefeld)"}]}],"gallerie":[{"bild":10363,"laufweite":100},{"bild":8481,"laufweite":42},{"bild":10357,"laufweite":58},{"bild":10361,"laufweite":49},{"bild":10372,"laufweite":51}],"subtitle":"View into the collection #9"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ausstellungen\/9852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ausstellungen"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ausstellungen"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ausstellungen\/9852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11490,"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ausstellungen\/9852\/revisions\/11490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kunsthalle-bielefeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}