Oskar Schlemmer Lot n° 19

Oskar Schlemmer Architectural sculpture R 1919 Bronze sculpture Height 98.8 cm Inscribed and dated on the lower right side "PROBEGUSS BRONZE 1964 UNVERKÄUFLICH FÜR JULIAN HILDEBRANDT". Posthumous casting 1964; unique in this material, besides the edition of 10 aluminium castings. Foundry H. Noack, Berlin. - With beautiful golden brown patina. v. Maur P 10a (aluminium) With a confirmation by Tut Schlemmer, Stuttgart, dated 10 March 1979 Provenance Estate of the artist; gift of Tut Schlemmer to the previous owner, family Hans Hildebrandt; private collection Exhibitions Including Bern 1959 (Kunsthalle Bern), Oskar Schlemmer, cat. No. 157 (aluminium); Hanover 1960/1961 a.o. travelling exhibition (Kestner-Gesellschaft), Oskar Schlemmer, Cat. No. 158 (aluminium); Rome 1962 (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna), Oskar Schlemmer, Cat. No. 44 (aluminum); London 1962 (Marlborough Fine Art), Painters of the Bauhaus, cat. No. 188 (aluminium); Berlin 1963 (Akademie der Künste), Oskar Schlemmer, cat. No. 254 (aluminium); Stuttgart 1968 (Württembergischer Kunstverein), 50 Years of the Bauhaus, p. 298, cat. No. 265 with ill.; London 1968/1971 a.o. travelling exhibition, 50 Years Bauhaus, p. 297, cat. No. 217 (aluminium); Berlin 1977 (Neue Nationalgalerie/Akademie der Künste/Große Orangerie), Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre, cat. No. 1/243, with fig. 112 Literature Karin v. Maur, Oskar Schlemmer, Das plastische Werk, Stuttgart 1972, p. 27, with full-page color plate p. 25 (aluminum); Wulf Herzogenrath, Oskar Schlemmer. Die Wandgestaltung der neuen Architektur, Munich 1973, Verz. 14.4, with ill. 227 (aluminium); Hans M. Wingler, Kleine Bauhaus-Fibel, Berlin 1974; p. 18, with ill. p. 20 (aluminium) In the important "Bauplastik R", Oskar Schlemmer's artistic oeuvre is visualized in nuce. His conception of object-based abstraction is already formulated here. In 1919, the year in which our relief was created, the State Bauhaus was constituted in Weimar from the School of Arts and Crafts founded by Henry van de Velde. The school was to be newer and more modern. From the idea of designing every area of life in the sense of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), the principle develops that form should now follow function and thus go beyond the idea of beauty developed in the 19th century. The new motto "form follows function" is based on the human being in its dimensions and needs. In 1920 Oskar Schlemmer was appointed to the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius and headed the class of wall design - an area of responsibility that can be seen in direct connection with our relief. For formally, the wall as an architectural component is per se immanent to the work of the sculptural genre of relief. The measurement of the human body is Oskar Schlemmer's very own theme, in his wall design, in his sculpture and painting as well as in his stage work. "He abstracts from the human figure the idea of its line, the law of its proportion and its surface content," described the director of the Dresden Municipal Art Collections, Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, in the first comprehensive article on Oskar Schlemmer in the Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst (Yearbook of Young Art) as early as 1921. (quoted from Karoline Hille. Fläche-Raum-Unendlichkeit, in: Ausst. Cat. Oskar Schlemmer. Wall-Image-Wall, Städt. Kunsthalle Mannheim 1988, p. 19). The editor of Oskar Schlemmer's work who follows Hans Hildebrandt, Karin v. Maur, describes the "Bauplastik R" in detail: "The series of reliefs from 1919 [culminates] in the 'Bauplastik R', with which Schlemmer abandons not only polychromy but also, to a large extent, surface fixity. On the vertical axis of a narrow vertical rectangle rises a figure of a young man turned to the right, whose slender outlines are reduced to elementary geometric forms. Their proportions result in a tectonic system of cubic rectangular fields, offset against each other on both sides of the dividing and connecting longitudinal axis. Through the rhythmic alternation of concave and convex sections, the surface is stepped and exaggerated in depth on several levels. In this way, a clear and differentiated structure of rectangular cavities, incised contours, sharp-edged ridges and rounded curvatures is created. Instead of colours, light takes on the function of activating accentuation: depending on the lighting, striking and changing contrasts of illuminated and shaded areas are created, which participate as a dynamic element in the spatial sculptural design. The profiled system of division, which permeates the shape and makes its lawful proportions visible, has such a consistent effect in all parts that the figure and the sculpture are united in a unified whole.