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Lot Essay
'I am interested in creating human types... and I am interested in the essence of space, not in "interiors"' (Oskar Schlemmer, cited in T. Schlemmer, The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, Middletown, CT, 1972, p. 361).
Painted in 1928, as Schlemmer returned to painting after a break of nearly three years, Zwei Köpfe über Einander was executed shortly before the artist left his teaching post at the Bauhaus for the Fine Arts Academy in Breslau. The next three years would see Schlemmer's art dominated by a commission for a series of large murals for the interior of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, one of the most important and ambitious projects of his career. A prize for winning a competition that had been organised in 1928 by the museum's director, Ernst Gosebruch, the commission required Schlemmer to provide a series of murals that would complement a monumental fountain of kneeling youths by Georg Minne. It proved to be a complex and difficult commission: Schlemmer created three completely different versions of the series of nine murals before concluding the project. However, his installation was not to last long. In 1933 on the instructions of the National Socialists, Schlemmer's murals were removed from the museum and destroyed.
Zwei Köpfe über Einander is closely linked to the preparation for this elaborate project and is part of a series of six similarly elongated compositions catalogued in Karin von Maur's catalogue raisonné under numbers G156-G161. As such, it appears that the present work is one of the first compositions to display Schlemmer's trademark exploration of space. The dual figure composition pushes up against the boundaries of the vertical canvas and, combined with the elaborate interplay of symmetry and balance, creates a harmonious but claustrophobic atmosphere. Schlemmer would further develop this visual complexity in later composition studies which would become even more elaborate and dramatic to the point where the strength of the murals clearly overwhelmed the figures of Minne's fountain, eventually forcing Schlemmer to attempt a lighter and more spatially expansive approach to the entire project.
Painted in 1928, as Schlemmer returned to painting after a break of nearly three years, Zwei Köpfe über Einander was executed shortly before the artist left his teaching post at the Bauhaus for the Fine Arts Academy in Breslau. The next three years would see Schlemmer's art dominated by a commission for a series of large murals for the interior of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, one of the most important and ambitious projects of his career. A prize for winning a competition that had been organised in 1928 by the museum's director, Ernst Gosebruch, the commission required Schlemmer to provide a series of murals that would complement a monumental fountain of kneeling youths by Georg Minne. It proved to be a complex and difficult commission: Schlemmer created three completely different versions of the series of nine murals before concluding the project. However, his installation was not to last long. In 1933 on the instructions of the National Socialists, Schlemmer's murals were removed from the museum and destroyed.
Zwei Köpfe über Einander is closely linked to the preparation for this elaborate project and is part of a series of six similarly elongated compositions catalogued in Karin von Maur's catalogue raisonné under numbers G156-G161. As such, it appears that the present work is one of the first compositions to display Schlemmer's trademark exploration of space. The dual figure composition pushes up against the boundaries of the vertical canvas and, combined with the elaborate interplay of symmetry and balance, creates a harmonious but claustrophobic atmosphere. Schlemmer would further develop this visual complexity in later composition studies which would become even more elaborate and dramatic to the point where the strength of the murals clearly overwhelmed the figures of Minne's fountain, eventually forcing Schlemmer to attempt a lighter and more spatially expansive approach to the entire project.