1888 -1943 · Stuttgart, Bauhaus and modern scene

Geometric bodies, measured spaces and choreographed movements make Oskar Schlemmer the great director of the human being at the Bauhaus.

Oskar Schlemmer was born in Stuttgart in 1888 and died in Baden-Baden in 1943. Painter, sculptor, choreographer and scenographer, he devoted his work to the relationship between the human body and built space. Called to the Bauhaus in 1920, he directed the theater workshop there and created the Triadic Ballet, where costumes, spheres, cones and cylinders transform the dancer into a mobile figure. His paintings take up this research: bodies are simplified into geometric units, faces lose their individuality and architecture becomes a stage. Dancer (The Gesture) concentrates movement in a precise pose. Staircase scene and Bauhaus staircase order the figures according to the steps, the diagonals and level changes. Painted in 1932 when the Nazis threatened the school, The Bauhaus Staircase becomes a tribute to his ideal of union between art, technique and life. After his departure from the institution in 1929, Schlemmer suffered cultural persecution from the Nazi regime, which classified his work among so-called degenerate art. After his departure from the institution in 1929, Schlemmer suffered cultural persecution from the Nazi regime, which classified his work among so-called degenerate art. The "Oskar Schlemmer" selection notably compares L’Escalier du Bauhaus and Scène d’Escalene.

Schlemmer doesn't just represent a body in a room: he measures how the human form transforms space and how architecture regulates every movement.