Early Modernism: 1900-1920 From The Moderna Museet Collection
(Exhibition 2011, Moderna Museet Malmö)
In this exhibition, we highlight works from Moderna Museet’s rich collection of early 20th century art, including artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Siri Derkert, Sonia Delaunay, Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and many others.
(Source: modernamuseet.se)
session 8: moholy-nagy and the bauhaus
The Bauhaus. A very familiar name to me - thanks to a font style called Bauhaus - and a topic that was so diverse in its discussion that I only had two pages of notes about it in my Moleskine. (I do that sometimes; when my brain is receiving too much, I freeze up and end up not being able to do anything.)
On the whole, I do understand what it’s all about: it’s an art and craft school in Germany founded by Walter Gropius that operated from 1919 to 1933, that had to be closed down as the Nazi rose to power. The teachers and students in the Bauhaus went there mostly to work together, mingle, and exchange ideas, so instead of being a proper learning institution, it was really more of a meeting place for visionaries of that time. The Bauhaus was known to have tried to balance the art and the craft (i.e. technology) so it wasn’t just painting that the faculty and the students created, but also other forms of art and craft (such as textile, interior, graphic design and many more). Basically, it’s the ideal art school that, if it existed today, I’d have tried to get into just because.
Besides László Moholy-Nagy, the main artist and designer who was active as a teacher at the Bauhaus, we also discussed Paul Klee, an Austrian artist that I’ve known about before. Klee’s paintings were shown and I still think they’re pretty weird (I was so in awe of them that I forgot to write down anything about it and just took note of the names) but they’re worthy of further investigation. We also returned to Vassily Kandinsky, the Russian artist we’d discussed several weeks before during the topic of Expressionism, and we learned that his abstraction had developed into something more geometric in shapes.
Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire (1921)
Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School.
Schoenberg was a painter of considerable ability, whose pictures were considered good enough to exhibit alongside those of Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky
The most memorable paintings for me from the expressionist movement.
Street, Dresden - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner | Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 4 - Vasily Kandinsky | Girl Putting On A Show - Egon Schiele
session 4: kandinsky & expressionism
I… have no idea what the movement actually is.
Sorry.
All I managed to learn was that there were two groups in the German Expressionist movements and they were called Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter. (Kandinsky belonged to the second group.) The first had a more primitive-looking artwork and the former was very into spiritualism in their art (particularly music).And Kandinsky’s paintings are abstract.
When I say abstract, I do mean abstract. My brain is still catching up with it right now.
Apart from that, I’m unfortunately clueless. By far this was the most difficult movement that we learned so far because I just can’t find a common theme between one painter’s works and the others. I’m If anyone can instruct me further, please do!
Further readings:
