 The World of Abstract
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The Rite of Spring, an art gallery that is now gone, but that was at 5, rue du Cherche-Midi, Paul Dermée and I used to hold exhibitions of abstract art and literary events in 1927 . Marinetti, Walden, Kassak, Schwitters and many others had their turn to hold forth with recitations and speeches accompanied by boos or applause. Paintings by Werkman, Huszar Vantongerloo, Mondrian, Arp, Sophie Tauber and others who are now forgotten were presented and discussed with impatience there. All this activity fertile, exercised in the face of hostility from established critics of the day, was terminated on the eve of World War II, but not before he was reinforced for a while by the effects of Nazism in Germany emptied as intellectuals ther.
One of the most important between the wars was the Bauhaus in Germany, a sort of university construction pure and applied art that was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919. There has been much discussion of the influence of the Bauhaus Van Doesburg two years after its founding. There is no doubt that the ideas of De Stijl group were strongly felt in the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivists of those who were introduced by Lissitzky. Bauhaus these two movements spread across Germany through the whole of Central Europe. But the Bauhaus was less a training ground for abstract painters as a center for the revival of taste, through the study of matter for its own sake, despite the presence of such distinguished professors as Klee, Kandinsky , Feininger, Moholy-Nagy, Albers and Schlemmer.
This study and research at the Bauhaus were based on a new vision, a refined vision of classical ideas and prejudices, so that his teaching has prepared the way for a high degree of understanding of abstract art. The student and the general public were also allowed to share the thoughts of leaders around the Bauhaus Bauhausbücher, a famous series of books published by the institution. Those dealing with painting or art in general were written by Malevich, Mondrian, Van Doesburg, Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy (empty Bibliography).
The Bauhaus was forced to leave Weimar in 1925 and was introduced again in the open country near Dessau. New buildings, designed by Gropius, were officially opened in December 1926. The premises were undoubtedly the work of more rational and functional scrupulously that the world had seen so far. I remember my surprise when I visited the Bauhaus in 1928, and I feel that I was before the ideas of De Stijl, boldly illustrated and fulfilled in an impressive block of buildings. The main facade was entirely of glass. The Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in 1933. It was certainly due to the Bauhaus, which had prepared the public mind for her, the first chamber or gallery has been set aside in a public museum, permanently open to viewers in Hanover in 1925. It was also the first time that all works of Mondrian found their place in a national collection. This famous "gallery abstract", with its striking interior design by Lissitzky himself, was destroyed by the Nazis in 1937.
1926, the first traveling exhibitions of abstract art that have been sent on tour around the United States by the "Societe Anonyme". This company, founded in 1920 by Miss Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, had a remarkable influence on the teaching of art. In 1927, also in America, the AE Gallatin Collection was opened to the public as the Museum of Living Art, but in this case, the cubists were the most strongly represented, the pure abstract painters being introduced much later after 1935.
To be historically accurate, the second official museum to open permanent shows of abstract painting was the gallery in Lodz, Poland. This collection was created entirely by gifts or bequests which were mainly derived or prepared in Paris. I contributed to some extent with paintings by Baumeister, Huszar Vordemberge Werkman and who were then my property. Arp, Sophie Tauber, Charchoune, Calder, Sonia Delaunay, Van Doesburg, Foltyn, Gleizes, Gorin, Vantongerloo, Helion, Herbin, Schwitters and others less known, also gave their support. An illustrated catalog was published in March 1932. The rooms in the gallery of abstract Lodz are now closed to the public, but the collection itself has been preserved intact.
In 1937, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) was founded in New York. Finally, in 1939, also in New York, the Museum of Modern Art opened its new building, destined to become the largest center in the world for the study of abstract art through its exhibitions, its well-stocked library and its own publications. This period could be questioned in any other way, giving an account of the main personalities involved. But let us see what happened to De Stijl movement.
After being diverted from its original course by Van Doesburg was in 1924, the famous journal (De Stijl) was performed without Mondrian, but with the addition of some young artists (Domela, Vordemberge, and the script writers Eggeling and Richter). It closed in 1928, but a number was posthumously published by Mrs. Van Doesburg in 1932.
After the death of Van Doesburg in March 1931, the influence of Mondrian has increased in both depth and breadth through his work in the studio. He had strong supporters in all countries in Europe, but especially in Germany and Switzerland. In 1934 he was visited by a very young American Holtzman, Harry, to be its first direct disciple in the States. (24) In the same year Ben Nicholson, a painter of experience, came to see him and once again the studio in the Rue du Depart left an indelible memory. Accordingly Nicholson became the recognized leader of abstract painting in Britain.
Vantongerloo George, who had settled in France in 1919 (first in Menton, then in Paris) has undertaken a series of mathematical calculations fascinating, all tending to prove by force of numbers and formulas that the works of Mondrian - and of course his own - were infallibly correct. He gave up this company later sought refuge, no less inevitably, in the curved line and what he called "the unknown".
On the rest of the team only Stijl painters Vilmos Huszar and Bart van der Leck remained in Holland. The latter has renounced abstraction almost immediately he tried. Regarding Huszar in 1921 (three years before Van Doesburg), it makes use of the diagonal line in compositions where the theme was often based on stage or for sets, and has gradually introduced elements of representation . A flower-composition (flowers, geometric course) was presented to the Société Anonyme exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926.
In Holland, he was a foreigner, the attractiveness of the printer and painter Nicolas Henry Werkman, of Groeningen. He painted, wrote, designed and printed. Like Kurt Schwitters in Hanover, he published his own review, the next call. He printed his own hands, and often in an unusual way. Ay the figures could be unfolded to make a kind of post which words Plattegrond van de kunst in omstreken (a level of art and its surroundings) were blocked in rectangles of different colors. In recent years Werkman showed a rare virtuosity in his creation of large monotypes in brilliant colors. The most interesting are those he painted between 1923 and 1929. After 1935, he returned to occasional suggestions of naturalism, and end up the numbers. Werkman was very active in the Dutch resistance during the war and was shot by the Nazis at night before retiring from Groeningen. A considerable part of his work was lost in the fire.
As we have seen, the other important flow of geometric abstraction came from Russia. There he went under different names such as Suprematism (Malevich), constructivism (Tatlin), non-objectivism (Rotchenko) and Proun (Lissitzky). When the Soviet leadership began to be favorable to abstraction in 1921, Lissitzky, Gabo, Pevsner and Kandinsky left Russia and went to different parts of Europe. Kandinsky went to Weimar, Pevsner in Paris, and Lissitzky and Gabo settled in Berlin. Lissitzky in particular had considerable influence in Germany.
Two of his close friends were the Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whom he had met in Düsseldorf in 1920, and Laszlo Peri who had spent several months as an architect in Russia. The first in time has achieved fame in Europe and America through its multiple activities as an artist, teacher and writer, but the second is less well known. Peri kept in the background and produces little, and as far as I know there is only one of his paintings in a public collection. Peri constructivism is more austere and reserved as Lissitzky, Moholy and more concentrated than that is characterized by a lyrical manipulation of the environment and experience in new techniques.
But I would say that the constructivist stream finds its fulfillment in the richest abundant body of work so patiently and quietly produced by Sophie Tauber in Zurich and Paris over thirty years.
Mention should be made of two painters in the tradition Stijl, Polish artist Henry Stazewski and Ladislas Strzeminski, who painted works of exceptional purity during the thirties. " The first of them, especially impressed me with its white canvas on which the treatment of paint only spared to present an extremely simple structure planes arranged in a strictly horizontal-vertical relationship. Both of them were members of the Circle and Square in 1930. Another Pole, Henry Berlewi had already composed abstract works before them, he called mechanofaktur and aimed at a kind of alphabet of simple visual forms.
In Germany, there was also Domela (Berlin), Vordemberge (Osnabrück), Baumeister (Stuttgart) and Schwitters (Hanover). The first two of these first worked according to orthodox principles Stijl, but later evolved into a more varied form of expression.
Domela moved to Paris in 1933. He is now best known for his' objectpaintings "in which the curve is the most important and in which he introduced all sorts of themes and substances that combines or sets against each other with unmatched craftsmanship.
Vordemberge fled Germany just before the war and went to live in Amsterdam. He currently teaches art in Ulm and painted very sober neo-constructivist compositions as delicate pastel tones.
Baumeister drew attention in 1921 by a few mural compositions very personal quality in which the curve is operated in harmony with the straight line and the circle with the square. On one occasion (1922) he produced a wall relief comprised entirely of horizontal and vertical lines.
As for Kurt Schwitters, it is probably one of the most outstanding personalities of this period. Its varied activities, full of surprises and unusual disinterestedness of his work and thought, have already made him a sort of legend. Among his productions are many plastic collages (collages) that can only be described as being beyond description. Everything he does has the franchise even decisive and authentic.
In Paris, the Helion fluid, elusive as mercury, first flirted a bit with the neoplasticism, then invented a strong and sensitive style of his own, after which he began to run wild.
In about 1930Herbin started painting abstracts full of curves, from which he gradually developed his own alphabet based on the geometric characteristics of which he is now famous.
Sergei Charchoune, a romantic depth that is often capable of subtlety and sometimes dark and disturbing, made some simple paintings between 1925 and 1935 that were painted in ocher, brown or olive green monochrome and unfortunately, he called "Cubism ornamental. "There is nothing ornamental about them, but they move in their sweetness, with a kind of repressed sentimentality which is not least due to their transparent honesty, manages to show through their Misty indecision.
Cubist Albert Gleizes the intellectualized helped discover personal forms of abstraction ranging from extremely simple to extremely sophisticated. His study of art history took him after this manner from initial until he moved to the interpretation or mapping a kind of religious painting style based on the novel. Gleizes will also be remembered for restoring the confidence of Robert Delaunay himself by his praise of Delaunay intuitive work in 1912-13, and bringing him back to abstract painting in 1930 or thereabouts.
Alfred Reth, one of the 'forgotten children' of Cubism and Van Rees, Donas tour operators and others, found himself driven by an inner necessity to all sorts of menial experiences in new materials and themes. The results he obtained in this manner are often surprising, but often disappointing. It was only after 1945 that he was, in a monumental style that leaves no doubt that he also has a truly creative personality.
New Henry started as a musician, then took fine arts in 1920 when he produced abstract collages of miniature proportions. He has led and still leads a very retired life, while keeping an eye on the outside world, essentially a humorous eye, as Klee, although he almost always avoids any hint of figuration. His painting is extremely fun, full of discoveries and arrangements that are often funny and always discrete and rhythmic.
Finally, a distinctive figure was Otto Freundlich, a painter, sculptor and poet who began as a member of the German expressionist school. After he came to Paris, he began to paint in primary colors, set in the flat. It was 1919 before he broke with the performance. In the twenty years that followed Freundlich painted a series of large canvases composed of rectangles of unequal size painted in vivid hues, in which the darker areas were offset by lighter areas. His works are impressive in their concentrated power and there is something exhilarating in their lyricism controlled.
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