 |
 |
DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON Research Seminar, Monday 27th February 18.00 Strand Campus, K0.31 (The Small Committee Room) NICCOLA SHEARMAN (Courtauld Institute of Art) “Stuttgart and the Other Inventor of Abstraction: An Introduction to the Role of Adolf Hoelzel in German Modernist Art” By 1906, several years before Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter artists took to the world stage as pioneers of abstract painting, Adolf Hoelzel (1853 – 1934) had already established his own laboratory of non-representational art and was busy shocking the good professors of Stuttgart with his radical teaching methods. And yet his contribution to modernist art has been largely neglected in the historiography. Working on the principle that ‘Kunst ist eine Wissenschaft’, Hoelzel’s tirelessly experimental repertoire, based on colour theory and rules of geometrical form and structure, amounted to a sort of natural history of artistic means. In relation both to the tonal qualities of colour and the rhythmic harmonies of line and form, musical principles played a central role in the artist’s work. His public oeuvre ranges from early experiments with simplified landscape and figural forms through mosaic-like constructions of primary colour blocks to kaleidoscopic pastel improvisations in wild organic form, taking in collage and stained glass along the way. Equally striking is the unpublished collection of rough sheets combining theoretical notes and aphorisms with diagrams and free sketches, which in their energy and inventiveness border on forms of automatic writing and drawing. These features alone would make Hoelzel an interesting subject for re-examination, but what increases the significance of this ‘cautious avant-gardist’ is undoubtedly the legacy of his pedagogical practice. In bringing this aspect into particular focus, this paper argues for a new look at Stuttgart as a fertile arena comparable to the more familiar centres of Munich, Dresden and Berlin, and in the area of art school reform an important training ground for the core curriculum of the Bauhaus. In this respect, Hoelzel’s experimental techniques, his facilitating attitude and encouragement of links with industry, are considered as a form of proto-‘Baukunst’ that was to inform the work of Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten, as well as the powerfully inventive Willi Baumeister, himself responsible for the regeneration of the Stuttgart Academy after WWII. Niccola Shearman is a PhD Candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art ----- Dr Benedict Schofield Lecturer in German Senior Tutor, School of Arts and Humanities King's College London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/german http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/german/people/staff/academic/schofield Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kingsgerman Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kingsgerman / @kingsgerman Call us on Skype: kingsgerman