Lot 36 D

“Schawinsky’s pictures breathe an air of the theatre and circus, white and red in front of a stunning blue; three-dimensional bodies, including classicising architectural elements which – in spite of the technically meticulous drawing of the cornices and profiles – seem unreally strange before the depth of these backgrounds.” In 1929 the art historian and museum director Ludwig Grote opened an exhibition on the Bauhaus painters in Halle with these words (cited in Nachlass Grote, in: Archiv im Germanischen Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, no. 110). Grote was referring to the architectural pictures Xanti Schawinsky had been creating since 1926: these display floating fragments of buildings and are a reflection on his work as a stage designer. As a student at the Bauhaus, he worked with Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and, above all, Oskar Schlemmer. He solved practical and technical problems for Schlemmer, but he was simultaneously a brilliant collaborator in the development of pictorial concepts. Equipped with this experience, Schawinsky was hired by the Stadttheater Zwickau in 1926 and designed sets for classic and modern productions.
Schawinsky also created the tempera painting “Fließendes Fragment” in this context. Floating above a barren desert landscape, we find a cloud-like form and the architectural fragment of a profiled window frame – the two could scarcely be of a more contrary character. Painting in washes, he has created an imaginary space in which the architectural element has been robbed of its function and is placed in an irrational relationship with the pink-coloured cloud covering up the sun. Displaying certain echoes of the Surrealists’ painting, the picture conveys a sense of lightness and movement unusual for the Bauhaus.