Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer's approach to performance was both experimental and revolutionary. He deliberately defied traditional constraints and rules of theater and dance, inventing entirely new forms of these art disciplines.

As one of the pioneers in modernizing performance art, his work laid the groundwork for many subsequent innovations in the field. In addition to his contributions to performance, Schlemmer delved into painting and sculpture, earning international acclaim for his diverse work.

Biography of Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer was born in Swabia, Germany, to Carl Leonhard Schlemmer and Mina Neuhaus. He was the youngest of six children. After the death of both parents around 1900, when Schlemmer was just 12, he was raised by his sisters.

Early on, Schlemmer developed a sense of independence. At 15, he began an apprenticeship in an inlay workshop and, in 1905, moved to a marquetry workshop. During this period, he also continued his education, first attending the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Stuttgart. He later won a scholarship to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in the same city. There, under the mentorship of Friedrich von Keller and Christian Landenberger, Schlemmer embraced the en plein air painting technique, immersing himself in nature and applying the approach of earlier avant-gardes.

Schlemmer's landscapes grew increasingly geometric, particularly after he encountered the work of Paul Cézanne. Following a brief period in Berlin in 1911, Schlemmer returned to Stuttgart, where he became a master student of the abstract artist Adolf Hözel. During this time, he continued to explore the interplay between form and color, gradually shifting towards Cubism.

With the outbreak of World War I, Schlemmer enlisted for military service. After being injured, he was assigned to a military cartography unit in Colmar, where he served until 1918. The doll-like figures he created during this period may have been influenced by his exposure to the wounded soldiers in military hospitals, reflecting a response to the wartime trauma he witnessed.

After the war, Schlemmer turned to sculpture, viewing it as a natural extension of his geometric art into three dimensions. He also saw the performing arts as an underexplored medium with new expressive possibilities. Returning to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, Schlemmer, along with Paul Klee, worked to modernize the curriculum and introduce these fresh ideas to the next generation of artists. This reform work caught the attention of Walter Gropius, the director of the Bauhaus, who invited Schlemmer to lead the wall painting and sculpture departments at the school.

In 1920, Schlemmer and his wife Helena Tutein (known as Tut) relocated to Weimar to begin his teaching career at the Bauhaus. Shortly after Schlemmer's arrival, in the summer of 1921, the Bauhaus theater workshop was established. Initially overseen by the German artist Lothar Schreyer, Schlemmer succeeded him as the department's Master of Form two years later.

In June 1929, Schlemmer took up a teaching position at the Staatliche Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe (State Academy of Fine and Decorative Arts) in Breslau. After his experimental period at the Bauhaus, he returned to focusing solely on painting, continuing to explore geometric forms and color on canvas. However, he was forced to leave Breslau in November 1932 when the academy closed due to the financial crisis following the Wall Street Crash. Schlemmer quickly secured a new professorship at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe (United State School for Fine and Applied Art) in Berlin.

The artist's tenure in Berlin was brief. With the rise of the Nazi party in the early 1930s, avant-garde artists were increasingly marginalized. Following the Nazi electoral victory in September 1930, an order was issued to paint over Schlemmer's murals at the Weimar Bauhaus. While many artists fled Germany, Oskar Schlemmer chose to stay but moved to rural south Baden. Feeling isolated, he ceased creating art from 1933 to 1935. His sense of exclusion was exacerbated when his work was included in the Nazi-organized 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. Despite this, his art was showcased in major exhibitions in London and New York in 1938. Schlemmer resumed painting, but his work took on a more somber tone as he grappled with his new reality.

Towards the end of his life, Oskar Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe (Institute for Painting Materials) in Wuppertal, alongside artist friends such as Willi Baumeister and Georg Muche. This lacquer factory allowed him to experiment with new materials, including lacquer paint and panels of wood, cardboard, and steel. In October 1941, he attempted to arrange a public exhibition of his works but faced difficulties realizing it. The artist passed away from a heart attack in Baden-Baden two years later.

The Art of Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer was innovative in bridging the gap between pure abstraction and representational art. Although his work was predominantly abstract, he retained elements of the human body's physical structure in his paintings, sculptures, and performances. He depicted people as architectural forms, simplifying the human figure and deconstructing it into its fundamental parts.

In his theater and dance work, Schlemmer merged his interest in representing the human body with kinetic studies, exploring the interaction between performer and space. He transformed these observations into abstract geometric and mechanical choreography and costumes. His most renowned piece, The Triadic Ballet (1922), exemplifies this synthesis.

Schlemmer’s work resonated with Bauhaus principles, which sought to integrate art and technology, and man and machine. His paintings often featured genderless automatons, and his dancers moved in unconventional, machine-like manners. By relating humans to machines, Schlemmer was at the forefront of a movement that used technology to explore and understand the human condition more deeply.

Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus

The Bauhaus period was the most prolific phase of Oskar Schlemmer’s career, fostering an environment of collaboration that encouraged him to explore spatial concepts and experiment with various materials. He worked closely with Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Johannes Itten, embracing Gropius's vision of collective creativity and the integration of multiple art forms into a unified Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art).

In 1925, the Bauhaus published an essay by the artist titled "Mensch und Kunstfigur" (Man and Art Figure), where he discussed his experiments in painting, sculpture, and stage work. He emphasized the human figure as a bridge between two-dimensional art and three-dimensional stage design. Despite gaining international recognition for his paintings produced in Weimar, Schlemmer chose to concentrate on his stage work after the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau in 1925.

During their time at the Bauhaus, Schlemmer and his wife Tut fully immersed themselves in the school’s social life, interacting with fellow staff members such as Gunta Stölzl, Marcel Breuer, Josef Albers, and Marianne Brandt. In 1926, the artist organized the first Bauhaus party, The White Party, and continued to manage several notable events, including the Beard-Nose-Heart party (1928) and The Metal Party (1929).

Oskar Schlemmer resigned from the Bauhaus in 1929, partly due to the increasingly tense political climate in Germany and partly because of Walter Gropius's departure as director, replaced by the architect Hannes Meyer. In October 1929, the Bauhaus dedicated a special edition of its magazine to Schlemmer in recognition of his contributions. Walter Gropius later described Schlemmer as a Master who had played a unique role in the Bauhaus community.