Xanti (Alexander) Schawinsky Lot n° 636

Xanti (Alexander) Schawinsky The Figural Cabinet (Bauhaus Theatre) Around 1926/27 Vintage, gelatin silver print. 18.3 x 29 cm. Inscribed in ink on the reverse 'technical execution of the figurines: Carl Schlemmer', with the stamps 'PROFESSOR OSKAR SCHLEMMER BAUHAUS DESSAU' and 'Das Figurale Kabinett' as well as a copyright stamp. - Print with strong traces of use. Mounted under passe-partout. Provenance Estate of Xanti Schawinsky; private collection, Switzerland Exhibitions Salzburg 2006 (Museum der Moderne), Kunst auf der Bühne - Art on Stage. Les grands spectacles II Literature Dirk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer. Das Triadische Ballett und die Bauhausbühne, Berlin 1988, fig. 166; Eleonara Louis/Toni Stooss (eds.), Kunst auf der Bühne - Art on Stage. Les grands Spectacles II, Ausst.kat. Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Weitra 2006, p. 61 with ill. (this print). "Das Figurale Kabinett" - this was the title of the first large stage work realized by Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus, a mechanical cabaret: "Half shooting gallery - half metaphysical abstractum, mixture, that is varied from sense and nonsense, methodized by color, form, nature and art, man and machine, acoustics and mechanics" (cit. after Oskar Schlemmer/László Moholy-Nagy, Die Bühne im Bauhaus (Bauhausbücher 4), Munich 1925, p. 22/23). In its first version (1922/23), the "Figural Cabinet" consisted of a black-lined, five-meter-wide flat stage on which partly movable grotesque figures and forms could be moved back and forth independently of one another on conveyor belts, controlled by a mechanical "magister" on a drive wheel. In an extended second version for larger stages - documented in the print available here - Schlemmer supplemented this semi-automatic mechanism with 18 portable flat figures, behind which actors dressed in black were concealed. As in the first version of the "Figural Cabinet", these figures, designed in bold colors, were also executed by Oskar's brother Carl Schlemmer and took up the entire stage width of about 12 meters, as can be seen in the photograph here, arranged in a row. The "Figural Cabinet", which occupied Schlemmer just as much as the "Triadic Ballet" over many years, was performed only a few times in 1927 at the theater in Halle/Saale, supported by students of the school of arts and crafts there. Introduction "From Bauhaus to Black Mountain College - Photographs from a Swiss Private Collection" see Lot 631