Oskar Schlemmer – Master student of Adolf Hölzel; appointment at the Weimar Bauhaus
Oskar Schlemmer was born in Stuttgart on 4 September 1888. Following the early death of his parents, he was cared for by his elder sister, and he was forced to give up school for financial reasons. Schlemmer completed an apprenticeship as a draughtsman in Stuttgart and from 1906, attended the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts, taking composition as a further subject. In 1912, he was master student of Adolf Hölzel, and took part in various exhibitions together with other Hölzel students, such as the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition in 1914. In 1920, Walter Gropius appointed Schlemmer at the Bauhaus in Weimar where he was director in the workshop for murals alongside Johannes Itten. Schlemmer also became increasingly interested in stage design and in the early 1920s, had great success with his design for the set and costumes of two operas by Paul Hindesmith, performed in Stuttgart. The premiere of his Triadic Ballet, on which he had worked since 1916, attracted similar attention. Subsequently, he also took charge, at least unofficially, of the Stage workshop of the Bauhaus.
Man as doll on an abstract geometric stage
Despite his success as sculptor and stage designer, Oskar Schlemmer owed his fame initially to his paintings, in which he set anonymous figures without individual characteristics, often in the hitherto rather unusual view from the back, in a space free of all decorations. Man as mask and puppet, inserted into a geometric-abstract environment. Oskar Schlemmer brought this artistic concept to the stage in the form of Tänzermenschen, whom he created as an artificial figure from costume, music and dance. After moving to Dessau, where he initially set up a test stage, the artist gradually retreated from the stage workshop of the Bauhaus and dedicated himself primarily to paining. In the years that followed, he created large-format wall paintings and various sculptures.
Dark years in National Socialist Germany
In 1933, Oskar Schlemmer lost not only his best friend and soulmate, Otto Meyer-Amden; the National Socialist takeover of power forced him to resign from his teaching post at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen (United State Schools) in Berlin. He was also subject to severe defamation: His work was considered ‘degenerate’, the conformist press labelled him as an ‘art Bolschevist’, and in 1934, the National Socialist iconoclasm destroyed his murals in the Brunnensaal of the Folkwang Museum in Essen. Financial difficulties forced Schlemmer to take on dissatisfactory jobs such as camouflage painting for military plants and although he and other artists ostracised by the Nazi dictatorship – such as Willi Baumeister, Franz Krause, Alfred Lörcher and Georg Muche - were provided consulting positions by the entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr Kurt Herberts in his paint factory, the demands and privations of that time had such a negative effect on Schlemmer’s constitution, that he required ever more frequent treatment in hospitals and sanitoriums in the 1940s. His last significant work series was the eighteen-part, small-format Fensterbilder.
Oskar Schlemmer died of cardiac paralysis on 13 April 1943 in Baden-Baden.
Oskar Schlemmer - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
