oskar schlemmer // biography (1888–1943) / gallery / prints

Oskar Schlemmer
Bauhaus Logo
(1921)

//BIOG.//
OSKAR SCHLEMMER

Known as: German painter, sculptor and designer

Date of birth: September 4, 1888 (Swabia)

Date of death: April 13, 1943

Oskar Schlemmer was a pupil of Holzel. He taught at the Bauhaus, 1920-29, where he had a great influence, and in Breslau and Berlin until 1933, after which he had to live in retirement until his death.

He did a great deal of theatrical design, and his paintings have the slightly dessicated air of those Bauhaus products that were emphatically machine-made.

There are many works in Stuggart, and others in Basle, Cologne, Hartford Conn., Harvard Univ. and New York (M of MA).

Trivia:

With her husband she founded the movement Orphism in 1911, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes.
In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture.
Enrolled at the Stuttgart Academy in 1912.
Schlemmer's work was seen as degenerate by the Nazis and he was dismissed from his post at the Bauhaus.
He had his theories on art published and a comprehensive book of his letters and diary entries from 1910 to 1943 is also available.
Biography II