Oskar Schlemmer ( * 1888 † 1943 )
Artist Oskar Schlemmer
Experience the modern language of forms by Oskar Schlemmer – the Bauhaus artist who bridged painting, stage, and geometry! With clear lines, stylized figures, and visionary spatial concepts, he created works full of movement and structure. Discover his avant-garde compositions as a high-quality art print, a stylishly framed canvas, or an artistically hand-painted masterpiece in customizable sizes!
Oskar Schlemmer was born on September 4, 1888, in Stuttgart. He was a painter, sculptor, and stage designer. He had a preference for depicting human figures in space, especially in stereometric representation and interlocking groups of figures.
Schlemmer first attended the School of Applied Arts, but left after one semester to study at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts in the fall of 1906. There, he met his lifelong friend Otto Meyer-Amden, as well as Willie Baumeister and Alf Bayrle. He then attended the master class of Friedrich von Keller's composition school with Meyer-Amden. Subsequently, Schlemmer moved to Berlin to study the form analysis of Cubism and the French avant-garde. In 1913, he became a master student of Adolf Hölzel in Stuttgart, where, through a befriended dancer couple, his love for designing stage sets developed.
In World War I, Oskar Schlemmer volunteered for military service but was exempted after an injury. He returned to painting and founded the Üecht Group, advocating for a reform of art education and strongly supporting Paul Klee's appointment to Stuttgart.
In 1920, Schlemmer married Helena Tutein, and they had three children. In the same year, Walter Gropius appointed him to the Bauhaus, where he took over the workshop for mural painting before later transitioning to wood and stone sculpture (form master). After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, Schlemmer also took over the Bauhaus stage department as its head. During this time, Schlemmer's Bauhaus dances were created, each illustrating a particular material and its scenic possibilities (e.g., Stick Dance or Hoop Dance). Schlemmer established the teaching subject "The Human Being" and took on many teaching assignments at the Bauhaus until he left in the summer of 1929.
Schlemmer's style and motifs were diverse, and the degree of abstraction in his works changed repeatedly. However, he was interested in puppet-like and mask-like depictions of people from an early age. In 1916, he created the painting "Homo," which repeatedly appeared as a basic figure in profile in his works. In 1923, inspired by the complex Bauhaus idea, Schlemmer's most famous works were created. Freed from embellishments, his paintings focused on figurative representation, and Schlemmer's characteristic rear view appeared for the first time (The Banquet, 1923). Stair and railing motifs first appeared in 1931 (Group at the Railing), where figures connect rhythmically in a grid-like, staggered, and overlaid manner with the structure of the railing. Psychologically, the railing is considered a support and order-giver, a means of discipline, and stands as a contrast to the chaos and decay that were omnipresent in the political years of the 1930s. "We need number, measure, and law as armor and equipment to avoid being swallowed by chaos," Schlemmer once said. The work Bauhaus Stairway (1932) became a symbol of the youth culture movement of the 20th century.
With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Oskar Schlemmer's years of mental darkening began. His paintings also darkened, depicting threatening scenes reflecting his mental state. He died at the age of 54 on April 13, 1943, in Baden-Baden.
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