Intermediale Experimente am Bauhaus

de Schmidt, Kurt, Claudia Tittel, Torsten Blume

The exhibition will focus on the works of the Bauhaus artist Kurt Schmidt. Having enjoyed the experimenting with forms, colors and abstract objects within the inspiring Bauhaus environment, he found his personal image language and created a lot of works within the context of music, theatre, dances and fine arts. His 'Mechanical Ballet' (Mechanisches Ballett), premiered in the Jena Theatre in 1923, is regarded as one of the most revolutionary plays of the 20th century. The basic idea was to visualize 'the dynamic forces, which are fixed within the forms of abstract images, detached from their image composition, in motion' and to generate 'paintings in motion'. In particular, this idea expresses the Bauhaus intention towards new design and experiments. Schmidt not only applied the design principles of machines and their laws (and rhythms) to art but he rather wanted to cross the boundaries between different genres. Body, space, color and mechanical moves merge into an abstracting ensemble of forms. In addition to this play, Schmidt created several other works on the correlation of music, theatre and fine arts. Exhibition: Kunstsammlung Gera, Germany (22.03. - 10.06.2019).