Figure Facing Left, Oskar Schlemmer

Exhibition Label:
"Machine in a Void: World War I & the Graphic Arts," Mar-2010, Steve Goddard
Schlemmer, who had served in the infantry during the War, was a key figure in the early years of the Bauhaus, the postwar school of architecture and design located in Weimar from 1919-1925, and later in Dessau. This etching is closely related to his figure and costume designs for Triadisches Ballett (Triadic Ballet), first performed in 1922.

Archive Label 2003:
Schlemmer’s etching was printed on the Bauhaus press in Weimar, Germany, as one of the sheets in the Masters’ Portfolio. Under the auspices of printing Master Lyonel Feininger, this was one of four major collections of Bauhaus artists produced in the school’s own printshop. The set also included works by other Bauhaus Masters: Feininger, Kandinsky, Klee, Marcks, Moholy-Nagy, Muche and Schreyer.

Schlemmer’s life was not an easy one. After a promising start studying modernist art principles, he volunteered as a medical orderly when World War I began, but was reassigned to the infantry for the duration, surviving several wounds. In 1920, he was appointed to the Bauhaus faculty, where his innovative creations for costumes, stage sets, and theater scripts won him critical acclaim. His interest in promoting interrelationships between painting, decoration, and architecture garnered commissions for many mural programmes. The last decade of Schlemmer’s career was overshadowed entirely by the Nazi rise to power. Beginning in 1933, he was summarily dismissed from teaching posts, his work first defamed and then largely destroyed, and he was forced into exile in Switzerland.