Untitled (Study for a Wall Drawing in the House of Dieter Keller, Stuttgart)

PULL-OUT QUOTE: ‘I believe that I have saved some things that are not unworthy on the wall. Once again, I was amazed at the possibilities for action there ... I have to repeat over and over again how grateful I am that you gave me the opportunity’ – Oskar Schlemmer to Dieter Keller
Executed in 1940, the present two works are studies for the celebrated mural Familie (Family) – now held in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart – that Oskar Schlemmer created that year in Dieter Keller’s home. Born in 1909, Keller was a publisher, collector and champion of modern art, who formed close bonds with a number of artists from the Bauhaus and New Objectivity movements. As well as cultivating relationships with Willi Baumeister, Alexej von Jawlensky and others, he formed a particularly important friendship with Schlemmer. He bought his works – indeed, Keller was the original owner of several pieces in von Maur’s collection – and would later publish his books. Schlemmer had entered a period of great financial difficulty after his work was deemed ‘degenerate’ in 1933, and was thus grateful for the commission to paint in Keller’s Stuttgart house. It would be the last mural he created according to his own ideas, and offered him the opportunity to explore his visions in a private, liberated setting.
Schlemmer developed the composition for the mural over the course of various sketches, completing the final work between 19 and 24 July 1940. Keller gave Schlemmer a great deal of creative freedom, stating that ‘Schlemmer should by no means feel pressured into a “task”; he should be free in what he wanted to do for my house.’ Schlemmer replied that ‘Whenever I was given the opportunity to do murals freely and uncompromisingly, I have opted for abstraction and you should do it, especially at a time that forbids you’ (D. Keller and O. Schlemmer, quoted at https://www.staatsgalerie.de [accessed 23 March 2021]). The present studies show Schlemmer grappling with abstracted human forms: the final composition would feature a mother, father and child – Keller’s wife Martha was pregnant at the time – situated against a backdrop of intersecting geometric forms. A fragmentary figure departs the composition to the left, while the eyes of Fate watch over the trio to the right – a symbol, it has been suggested, of Dieter’s impending military call-up.