ArteF Fine Art Photography Gallery is pleased to open the new season with photographs by Xanti Schawinsky (1904-1979), one of the most important Swiss Bauhaus artists. Around 40 vintage black and white images, from various creative periods, amongst them Schawinsky's trademark stage sets, revolutionary photomontages and photograms, are brought together to offer a fascinating insight into the work of an artist who embodied the spirit of Bauhaus all his life, heralded Modernism in Swiss art and laid the foundations for future generations.
Zurich (PRWEB) August 26, 2007 -- ArteF Fine Art Photography Gallery (www.artef.com) is pleased to open the new season with photographs by Xanti Schawinsky (1904-1979), one of the most important Swiss Bauhaus artists. Around 40 vintage black and white images, from various creative periods, amongst them Schawinsky's trademark stage sets, revolutionary photomontages and photograms, are brought together to offer a fascinating insight into the work of an artist who embodied the spirit of Bauhaus all his life, heralded Modernism in Swiss art and laid the foundations for future generations.
"My dearest Xandianer, I miss you as a friend, as an exhibition artilleryman, as a master of lively competition and as a warm advocate." -- Walter Gropius.
Who was the man, for whom the legendary Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius had so much affection? It was Alexander "Xanti" Schawinsky, who, in the first half of the 20th century, would develop into the most prominent Swiss representative of the Bauhaus movement. As a pupil and later also an assistant of Gropius, he embodied the artistic interdisciplinarianism his mentor strived for and with it the Modernist zeitgeist like no one else. He was simultaneously a choreographer, actor, dancer, musician, painter and graphic designer and not least one of the first representatives of experimental photography. For Schawinsky the avant-gardist, this comparatively new medium was the ideal form of expression for a new perspective.
It encouraged him to broaden his visual experience to territories until then unchartered, and to sound out the limits of what was technically possible at the time. He experimented with new processes like photomontage for example and the photogram (an image of an object created directly onto light-sensitive paper without the help of a camera). Unconventional angles and surprising image compositions penetrate Schawinsky's works. And again and again the close relationship with other creative spheres, above all the theatre, is reflected. In typical "Bauhaus style", using all his skills and means, he always strived for a symphonic effect in the end product, whereby photography becomes a metaphor for the creative, artistic process.
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