Xanti (Alexander) Schawinsky Lot n° 644

Xanti (Alexander) Schawinsky Theme and variations on a face - Walter Gropius #12 1943 Vintage, gelatin silver print on matt textured paper. 34.9 x 23.8 cm. Lower right with number stamp '2037'. Signed, dated and titled in pencil on the reverse. Provenance Estate of Xanti Schawinsky; private collection, Switzerland After moving to New York in 1938 and in the years that followed until 1948, Schawinsky was increasingly active as a commercial artist and in this context was intensively involved with the depiction of faces and heads, among other things. Juliet Koss attributes the use of means of experimental alienation among other things to the influence of Marcel Duchamp, who also lived in Greenwich Village in New York in the early 1940s - as did Schawinsky - and was a close friend of his. In 1943, Schawinsky dedicated a series of 20 variations on a portrait study to the former Bauhaus founder and director Walter Gropius on the occasion of his 60th birthday, expressing his respect and perceived closeness to his mentor in an affectionately ironic manner. Introduction "From the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College - Photographs from a Swiss Private Collection" see Lot 631