Schlemmer, Oskar (1888-1943) - 1922 Ballerina (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek München, Germany)

            Oil and tempera on canvas;   200 x 100 cm. 

Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. Born in in Stuttgart, his parents both died around 1900 and the Oskar learned at an early age to provide for himself. By 1903 he was supporting himself as an apprentice in an inlay workshop, moving on to another apprenticeship in marquetry. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule as well as the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart under the tutelage of landscape painters Christian Landenberger and Friedrich von Keller. In 1910 Schlemmer moved to Berlin where he painted some of his first important works before returning to Stuttgart in 1912 as Adolf Hölzel's master pupil. In 1914 Schlemmer was enlisted to fight on the Western Front in World War I until he was wounded and moved to a position with the military cartography unit until returning to work under Hölzel in 1918.

In 1919 Schlemmer turned to sculpture and had an exhibition in Berlin. In 1920 he was invited to Weimar to run the mural-painting and sculpture departments at the Bauhaus School. However, due to the heightened political atmosphere in Germany at the end of the 1920s, in 1929 Schlemmer resigned and took a job at the Art Academy in Breslau. Schlemmer became known internationally with the première of his 'Triadisches Ballett' in 1922. His work for the Bauhaus and his preoccupation with the theater are an important factor in his work, which deals mainly with the problem of the figure in space. People, typically stylized female figures, continued to be the predominant subject in his painting. 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.

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, and took up a professorship at Berlin's Vereinigte Staatsschulen in 1932, which he held until 1933 when he was forced to resign by the Nazis. His pictures were displayed at the National Socialist exhibition of "Degenerate Art." During World War II Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe in Wuppertal 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 in the hospital at Baden-Baden in 1943.

Taken on: January 16, 2011

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oskar schlemmer

schlemmer

20th century

german

weimar

degenerate

1922

1920s

ballerina

public collection

cubism

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Sets appears in: • German/Austrian/Swiss - 1900 to 1950 • Cubism and Futurism

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