‘Schlemmer felt that man should not be represented as a psychic being agitated by feelings and emotions, marked by the “stigmata” of civilisation, but that the figure could be conceived as an ideal Gestalt, purified of all individual or temporary features … By containing the human shape in regular, linear, geometric patterns, he wanted to raise it to the sphere of the idol’ – Karin von Maur

‘My themes – the human figure in space, its moving and stationary functions, sitting, lying, walking, standing – are as simple as they are universally valid’ – Oskar Schlemmer

The collection’s extraordinary selection of works by Oskar Schlemmer reflects Karin von Maur’s close engagement with the artist. As the head of his archive, she authored his catalogue raisonné in 1979, and published widely on his oeuvre. During her time as deputy director of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, she spearheaded exhibitions of his work: today, important examples of his practice reside in the museum’s collection, including the landmark 1940 mural Familie – two studies for which are present in von Maur’s collection. Spanning three decades and two World Wars, the group of works assembled here captures her deep knowledge of Schlemmer’s practice, charting his journey from wounded soldier to Bauhaus pioneer to ‘degenerate’ artist amid the looming threat of the Third Reich.

Born in 1888, Schlemmer attended both the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. There, he studied with the landscape painter Christian Landenberger and made connections with a number of like-minded peers – notably the Swiss artist Otto Meyer-Amden, with whom he maintained detailed correspondence over the course of his career. After a brief sojourn in Berlin, he began to study afresh with the German painter Adolf Hölzel, who opened his eyes to abstraction. During the First World War, Schlemmer fought on the Western Front before injury relegated him to a military cartography unit in Colmar. Upon return to Stuttgart, he took up sculpture: an activity that would ultimately lead to his invitation to the Bauhaus in 1920. Schlemmer ran the mural and sculpture departments, as well as designing the iconic Bauhaus logo, before his seminal Triadisches Ballet (Triadic Ballet) in 1922 led him to transfer to the stagecraft workshop. He left the Bauhaus in 1929 and, four years later, was forced to cease teaching by the Nazi regime. After his works were included in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in 1937, he had very few outlets for his art, and spent his final years painting at the Institut für Malstoffe in Wuppertal. Schlemmer would not live to see the end of the Second World War – he died in 1943.

The present selection of works bears witness to Schlemmer’s rich exploration of the human form. Influenced early on by Cubism, he refused to follow his Bauhaus colleagues down the path of pure abstraction, grounding his investigations in the relationship between the figure and space. This stance accounts for the multi-media breadth of his practice, which operated in both two and three dimensions. Schlemmer saw the human figure as a sacred, totemic pillar that had the power to transcend earthly machinations: by reducing it to a series of abstract, near-architectural forms, he sought explore its intrinsic, universal rhythms. It was a poignant mission within a practice ravaged at both ends by conflict, and would continue to resonate throughout the twentieth century.