Lot 28 Dα

From the early 1920s, during the period when he was still active at the Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer was already devoting attention to diverse ways of depicting the human figure in space. From 1929 to 1932, when Schlemmer was teaching at the academy of art in Wrocław, the motif of the stairway became the focus of his engagement with painting. The unity of people and architecture, body and mind, stasis and motion that is formulated in these works corresponds to the fundamental idea of the Bauhaus. This culminated in the “Bauhaustreppe” (1932, Museum of Modern Art, New York), Schlemmer’s best-known painting, which he made to protest against the announcement that the Bauhaus would be closed by the Nazis.
The light watercolour “Drei Frauen von rückwärts” was created within this context. In a square format, Schlemmer has united three figures depicted from behind: they can be distinguished through their clothing and hairstyles and are endowed with a vivid body language, although they are realised in the form of idealised archetypes. The artist has anchored the figures in a spatial context that is not defined any more specifically and is characterised through shades of grey and clear lines. Even though no stairway is to be seen, Schlemmer has realised the motif of ascending figures. The one placed in the foreground functions like a repoussoir to lead our gaze into the depicted space while the other two define the middle ground and background, generating an extremely emphatic sense of depth. At the same time the representation of the figures gradually shifts from bust- to half-length to three-quarter-length image. In this way, Schlemmer has created a strong sense of rhythm in the picture and achieved the desired unity of people and the space surrounding them.