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Anni Albers (1899-1994)

In the world of art, Anni Albers forged her own unique path, always overshadowed by her husband, Josef Albers. Upon first glance, her works exude an enigmatic complexity far beyond that of her husband’s. While Josef’s art centers on squares and rectangles, Anni delves into more intricate and elaborate patterns reminiscent of fabric, expertly woven and knitted with exceptional balance and symmetry. It’s no surprise that Anni Albers stands as one of the most prominent textile artists of the 20th century. Although the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop displays some noteworthy pieces, the majority of her oeuvre can be found in the USA, where she garnered a dedicated following. www.ftn-books.com houses an impressive collection of titles on both Anni and Josef Albers, but for this instance, the focus will be solely on Anni Albers – for she deserves recognition as the true pioneer of her craft.

www.ftn-books.com has several Anni Albers items now available.

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Walter Gropius (1883-1969)

Walter Gropius was the founder of the Bauhaus and remained committed to the institution that he invested in throughout his life. He was a Bauhaus impresario in the best possible sense, a combination of speaker and entrepreneur, a visionary manager who aimed to make art a social concern during the post-war upheaval. After his departure as the Bauhaus’s director, Gropius recommended his two successors: Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The conservation of the Bauhaus’s legacy after its forced closure is another of Gropius’s accomplishments. He was also able to continue his career in exile in America as an avant-garde architect.

A native of Berlin, Gropius came from an upper middle-class background. His great-uncle was the architect Martin Gropius, a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose best-known work was the Königliche Kunstgewerbemuseum (royal museum of applied art) in Berlin, which now bears his name. In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, who worked as a creative consultant for AEG. Other members of Behrens’s practice included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. Gropius became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) as early as 1910.

The same year, Gropius opened his own company. He designed furniture, wallpapers, objects for mass production, automobile bodies and even a diesel locomotive. In 1911, Gropius worked with Adolf Meyer on the design of the Fagus-Werk, a factory in the Lower Saxony town of Alfeld an der Leine. With its clear cubic form and transparent façade of steel and glass, this factory building is perceived to be a pioneering work of what later became known as modern architecture. For the 1914 exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) in Cologne, Gropius and Adolf Meyer designed a prototype factory which was to become yet another classic example of modern architecture.

www.ftn-books.com has several titles on the Bauhaus available. Among them the 1971 BAUTEN UND PROJEKTE.

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Margaret Leiteritz (1907-1976)

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The following excerpt comes from Wikipedia, because in a few sentences it explains what Leiteritz works stands for and means for art in general, but…..

I have made a small study of Leiteritz and her works and when you look at these you can see that her works are a link between the Bauhaus of Kandinsky and the hard edge paintings of Kelly.  In between somme 40 Years but her works bridge this period perfectly. Somewhere between the Bauhaus Kandinsky and the hard Edge Kelly from the Seventies you must place Leiteritz, because she transformed herself into an artist who embraced abstraction and made rythm part of her paintings . Her works are definetely inspired by rythm and music.

 Margaret Leiteritz (1907–1976) was a German painter who studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1931.[1]

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Leiteritz produced ‘painted diagrams’, which drew heavily from the scientific articles and books in her care as she was a professional librarian before becoming a painter.

Many of her works were strongly influenced by chemical engineering, and especially the field’s graphs which depicted physical properties of substances. Leiteritz’s paintings typically reworked a mundane graph using large expanses of colour and a bold abstract theme, changing it into a dynamic painting. Other works are reminiscent of Bunsen burner flame or DNA gel.

leiteritz info

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Johan Niegeman (1902-1977)

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Most people do not know that dutch architects Mart Stam and Johan Niegeman actually taught at the Bauhaus institute. Even Piet Zwart taught at the Bauhaus, but he must be the absolute champion in the shortest of periods he taught over there….only 3 weeks.

Still Niegman taught almost 2 years at the Bauhaus and was influenced by the Bauhaus in such a way that the projects fro the rest of his career were very much influenced by the BAUHAUS principles and the projects his fellow architects realized over there. The “architectuur Museum” recognized the importance of Niegeman and published a wonderful publication on NIegeman. A true Wim Crouwel designed book which is still up to date and one of the only publications on Niegeman. Available at www.ftn-books.com

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Paul Citroen (1896-1983)

 

Schermafbeelding 2020-02-28 om 14.30.03At one time , many years ago, i was living in Wassenaar. Me and my ex wife had a small apartment in a newly build apartment building and just around the corner there was a “classic” dutch house. I learned that Paul Citroen , the dutch Bauhaus artist lived there. I know the drawings by Citroen, because i had seen them at Pulchri Studio, but what i learned many years later was that he was influenced by Bauhaus and was one of the great collage artists. I

t was an aspect of his work that i had never known before but was very appealing to me. It was the extra layer i was looking for in his art. Where his drawinsg and photographs were very personal and recognizable, his collages were inspired by his fellow artists at the Bauhaus. Since i i always remember Paul Citroen when i pass his old house and remember the great art he stands for.

I recently added an intriguing book from 1957 in which drawings and photographs by and on Paul Citroen are depicted.

citroen by citroen

 

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A perfect invitation card

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I have seen thousands of invitation cards by museums from all over the world and helped to produce hundreds of them. Sometimes you make a mistake in choosing the wrong picture or the color scheme does not work out the way it should have, but i know of the difficulties and the traps of producing a good invitation card. The subject has to be clear immediately and the picture on the card has to be a typical example from the exhibition. In my opinion here is a perfect card. Produced for the Bauhaus Archiv exhibition of Bauhaus photography. The card dates from 1990 and has an outstanding look and feel. The print quality is excellent and the subject clear immediately with the partly covered face in black and white. …… a perfect invitation it is and now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Günther Förg – Moskau / Moscow. 1995

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For many among us Günther Förg is the painter of lead surfaced paintings and one great print maker, but there is another quality in which he excels. Förg was a great photographer and made some high quality photo books on the almost forgotten ( Bauhaus )architecture of Tel Aviv and Moscow. The book on Tel Aviv i have sold a very long time ago, but was fortunate to find a Moscow copy with his photographs on a recent book market. This is a truly outstanding publication. Large sized , printed and published by Snoeck and of the highest print quality. The book shows the excellence of his photographs and makes you wonder why art lovers all over the world are not familiar with this part of Förg’s work.. The photographs look like still lives and do not only have an artistic quality but a historic quality too. Where the Tel Aviv book is of the highest quality, this Moscow book even looks better. It is a publication of a rare quality and a highly collectable photography/art book.

 

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Carry Hauser (1895-1985)

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Increasingly important and one  painter i discovered recently through a magnificent monograph/oeuvre catalogue on Carry Hauser which is available at www.ftn-books.com

I had to read some articles on this Austrian painter to know and discover myself how his art life developed through the years and it appears that the timeslot of the INTERBELLUM was artistically the most important one for him. For a quick biography…here is the entry on Wikipedia on the artist:

Carry Hauser was born in Vienna as Carl Maria Hauser into the family of a civil servant. He was educated at the Schottengymnasium and the Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, after which he studied at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule under, among others, Adolf Michael BoehmAnton von KennerAlfred Roller and Oskar Strnad. He then began his career as a painter, illustrator, theatrical designer and author, which was interrupted by World War I, for military service in which he volunteered in 1914. His war experiences made him a pacifist.

After the war he returned to Vienna, where among others he met Franz Theodor Csokor, for whose play Die rote Straße (“THe Red Street”) he designed the set in 1918. In the same year the first comprehensive exhibition of his work was held, in the museum at Troppau, and another was arranged for him by Arthur Roessler, although his earlier works had been lost during the war and could not be exhibited. He became still better-known in 1919 through his portfolio Die Insel (“The Island”).

From 1919 to 1922 Hauser was a leading member of the artists’ group Freie Bewegung (“Free Movement”), and also belonged to the artists’ society Der Fels (“The Rock”) while he lived for a time in Passau. From 1925 to 1938 he was a member of another artists’ group, the Hagenbund, of which he was president in 1927/28. In the theatrical world he was vice-president of the Vienna Theatre Guild (Wiener Theatergilde). During the 1930s in the time of the Ständestaat he was active in the Patriotic Front (Vaterländische Front).

After the Anschluss of 1938, Hauser, because of his political stance, was banned by the National Socialists from working and exhibiting. In 1939 he was given an appointment in the art school of Melbourne but was prevented from taking it up by the outbreak of World War II. His wife, Gertrud Herzog-Hauser (1894–1953), to whom he had been married since 1922, was of Jewish origin and emigrated to the Netherlands, where she managed to survive the war. Hauser went into exile in Switzerland, where he wrote Eine Geschichte vom verlorenen Sohn (1941, privately published 1945), the novel Zwischen gestern und morgen (1945) and the fairytale Maler, Tod und Jungfrau (1946).

In 1947 Hauser and his wife returned to Vienna and took part in the reconstruction. In 1952 he became General Secretary of the Austrian PEN Club, and later its vice-president, which he remained until 1972. He was also a council member of the organisation Aktion gegen Antisemitismus (“Action Against Antisemitism”) and was involved in the revival of the Berufsvereinigung der bildenden Künstler Österreichs (“Professional Union of the Fine Artists of Austria”), of which he was later vice-president.

He died in 1985 in Rekawinkel. He is buried in a grave of honour in the cemetery at Hietzing.

hauser

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Josef Albers Nesting Tables 1926/27

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This set of tables i first encountered at the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop where two types of these set were sold. One with colored perspex and one set with original italian fabricated glass. I had to had this and i ordered one set direectly from the manufacturer. These are so impressive and 100% like the original set which was originally designed at the Bauhasu by Josef Albers and thnis reedition from 2010 is one of the best small furniture items ever produced. I checked and this set is still available, but not as cheap as it originally was in 2010, but choose this set and you will have the pleasure of looking at one of the greatest functional Bauhaus designs ever made. Klein und More sells the original authorised set in Europe  and the Moma stora sells a set in their store for the US. Josef Albers is one of the artist of whom ww.ftn-books.com sells many items

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Albert Flocon (1909-1994)

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If i must compare Flocon with dutch artist it must be Maurits Cornelis Escher. Where Escher has its roots in geometry and math, Flocon is inspired by architecture and science He even studied at the Bauhaus under Josef Albers. Still Flocon has never become a household name in art.

In March 1965 they finally met.

Escher met the French artist and professor Albert Flocon, lecturer at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Flocon mainly created copper engravings and, like Escher, he was fascinated by the mystery of the perspective. Especially the curvilinear perspective, a form that Escher has also used several times (think of Hand with reflecting sphereBalconyThree Spheres IIDrop (Dewdrop) and Self Portrait in Spherical Mirror). Together with his colleague André Barre, in 1967 he published a book about this special perspective: La Perspective curviligne de l’espace visuel à l’image construite. In 1987 it was published in the US under the title Curvilinear Perspective: From Visual Space to the Constructed Image.The meeting proved to be of great importance to Escher; Flocon ensured that his prints became known in Paris. The professor personally mediated on the sale of prints and an organized Escher exhibition in Paris. In October 1965 Flocon published a ten-page article about Escher in the important monthly Jardin des ArtsA la frontiere de l’art graphique et desiques: Maurits-Cornelis Escher. In it he combined biographical information with analyzes of the prints and quotations from a conversation with Escher. The article gives a good description of Escher’s place in the art world. Previous Dutch art critics never came much further than pointing out that Escher’s work was (too) cerebral. Flocon gave a positive turn to this.

there are not many publications on Flocon, but ftn-books.com has one together with may Escher publications.

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