Save the Oskar Schlemmer Studio For Future Generations
Save the Oskar Schlemmer Studio For Future Generations
The Issue
The studio house of Oskar Schlemmer in southwest Germany is to be auctioned in a judicial foreclosure sale. Please sign this petition to preserve the timbered Bauhaus design building and its enchanting garden and prevent the sale.
Without urgent action, the historic home belonging to this iconic artist associated with the influential Bauhaus art school will be demolished or irreversibly modified.
The studio house is a site of immense cultural significance, showcasing the design and lifestyle of Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), one of the most influential avant-garde artists of the 20th century, who was a teacher and master at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s.
Among his most famous works are The Triadic Ballet, which marks its 100th centenary this year; the Bauhaus Dances and the world-famous painting Bauhaus Staircase on view at MoMA. When Hitler came to power, the Nazis branded Schlemmer’s art "degenerate", destroyed many of his masterpieces and banned him from working as an artist.
Unable to flee the Nazis and migrate to the United States, Schlemmer had a house with a studio built in the late 1930s near Badenweiler in the southern Black Forest. This “inner migration” retreat with its magnificent Rhine Valley views became the centre of Schlemmer’s life with his wife, Tut, and their three children. Schlemmer designed and painted parts of the interiors and furniture, created a garden and worked in the studio until late at night. Many of Schlemmer’s art contemporaries visited the family at the house. During the dark years of World War II, his daughter, Ute Jaïna Schlemmer, hid and preserved his artworks and it is thanks to her courage that his artworks enchant the art-loving public and are exhibited in important museum collections and exhibitions around the world.
The auction of the avant-garde studio house with no provision or safeguards for its preservation put it at risk of demolition as it is the land, rather than the building, that is of interest to speculating purchasers. Demolition of this house with its studio would mean the loss to posterity of yet another of Schlemmer’s important creations in Germany. Even if the studio house were not knocked down, its sale would mean that this important heritage site could not be preserved in its original design and would not be available to the public to appreciate Schlemmer’s life and legacy
The intent of his grandson, C. Raman Schlemmer, who with his late mother, Ute Jaïna Schlemmer, a stage, costume designer and teacher, has devotedly preserved Oskar Schlemmer’s artworks, is to make the studio a place of remembrance where the artist’s legacy is treasured as well as to turn it into a research centre focusing on the artist’s life and œuvre as well as on the Nazis persecution of artists and their destroying or looting of art masterpieces. The artist’s grandson envisages the studio becoming a space for cultural exchanges, encounters, readings, symposia, and documentary exhibitions on the Schlemmer legacy.
These initiatives would enrich the cultural life of the region between Germany, France and Switzerland. The centre would be affiliated and collaborate with institutions and archives worldwide, including the Getty Research Institute, the State Archives Baden-Württemberg, German Federal Archives, Museums collecting Schlemmer and Bauhaus artworks, as well as nearby the Badenweiler Literaturtage, Art Basel and museums in the area.
As he has for decades, C. Raman Schlemmer would share his wealth of knowledge of the œuvre of Oskar Schlemmer, his grandfather’s avant-garde contemporaries, and the Bauhaus movement as well as his own experience as a witness, for the benefit of the public.
Just as grandmother Tut Schlemmer and his mother did, C. Raman Schlemmer regards it as a moral obligation to ensure the preservation of his grandfather’s artistic legacy along with his studio as a cultural heritage site.
Please join us and sign the petition to save the home of this pioneering Bauhaus artist. The legacy and œuvre of Oskar Schlemmer should not be forgotten. The studio house should remind people now as well as generations to come of the importance of Schlemmer as a painter, sculptor, stage and costume designer, dancer and choreographer, composer, pedagogue, author, creator of a Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as serve as an admonitory example of an artist's fate under totalitarianism.
Images:
Schlemmer Studio House, Winter 1938/1939
Oskar Schlemmer in his Studio, 1939
Oskar Schlemmer with Sunflowers, 4 September 1938
Photographs © U. Jaïna Schlemmer
Castaway Modernism Basel’s Acquisitions of "Degenerate" Art. Kunstmuseum Basel
Analivia Cordeiro. From Body to Code, ZKM Karlsruhe
2,697
The Issue
The studio house of Oskar Schlemmer in southwest Germany is to be auctioned in a judicial foreclosure sale. Please sign this petition to preserve the timbered Bauhaus design building and its enchanting garden and prevent the sale.
Without urgent action, the historic home belonging to this iconic artist associated with the influential Bauhaus art school will be demolished or irreversibly modified.
The studio house is a site of immense cultural significance, showcasing the design and lifestyle of Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), one of the most influential avant-garde artists of the 20th century, who was a teacher and master at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s.
Among his most famous works are The Triadic Ballet, which marks its 100th centenary this year; the Bauhaus Dances and the world-famous painting Bauhaus Staircase on view at MoMA. When Hitler came to power, the Nazis branded Schlemmer’s art "degenerate", destroyed many of his masterpieces and banned him from working as an artist.
Unable to flee the Nazis and migrate to the United States, Schlemmer had a house with a studio built in the late 1930s near Badenweiler in the southern Black Forest. This “inner migration” retreat with its magnificent Rhine Valley views became the centre of Schlemmer’s life with his wife, Tut, and their three children. Schlemmer designed and painted parts of the interiors and furniture, created a garden and worked in the studio until late at night. Many of Schlemmer’s art contemporaries visited the family at the house. During the dark years of World War II, his daughter, Ute Jaïna Schlemmer, hid and preserved his artworks and it is thanks to her courage that his artworks enchant the art-loving public and are exhibited in important museum collections and exhibitions around the world.
The auction of the avant-garde studio house with no provision or safeguards for its preservation put it at risk of demolition as it is the land, rather than the building, that is of interest to speculating purchasers. Demolition of this house with its studio would mean the loss to posterity of yet another of Schlemmer’s important creations in Germany. Even if the studio house were not knocked down, its sale would mean that this important heritage site could not be preserved in its original design and would not be available to the public to appreciate Schlemmer’s life and legacy
The intent of his grandson, C. Raman Schlemmer, who with his late mother, Ute Jaïna Schlemmer, a stage, costume designer and teacher, has devotedly preserved Oskar Schlemmer’s artworks, is to make the studio a place of remembrance where the artist’s legacy is treasured as well as to turn it into a research centre focusing on the artist’s life and œuvre as well as on the Nazis persecution of artists and their destroying or looting of art masterpieces. The artist’s grandson envisages the studio becoming a space for cultural exchanges, encounters, readings, symposia, and documentary exhibitions on the Schlemmer legacy.
These initiatives would enrich the cultural life of the region between Germany, France and Switzerland. The centre would be affiliated and collaborate with institutions and archives worldwide, including the Getty Research Institute, the State Archives Baden-Württemberg, German Federal Archives, Museums collecting Schlemmer and Bauhaus artworks, as well as nearby the Badenweiler Literaturtage, Art Basel and museums in the area.
As he has for decades, C. Raman Schlemmer would share his wealth of knowledge of the œuvre of Oskar Schlemmer, his grandfather’s avant-garde contemporaries, and the Bauhaus movement as well as his own experience as a witness, for the benefit of the public.
Just as grandmother Tut Schlemmer and his mother did, C. Raman Schlemmer regards it as a moral obligation to ensure the preservation of his grandfather’s artistic legacy along with his studio as a cultural heritage site.
Please join us and sign the petition to save the home of this pioneering Bauhaus artist. The legacy and œuvre of Oskar Schlemmer should not be forgotten. The studio house should remind people now as well as generations to come of the importance of Schlemmer as a painter, sculptor, stage and costume designer, dancer and choreographer, composer, pedagogue, author, creator of a Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as serve as an admonitory example of an artist's fate under totalitarianism.
Images:
Schlemmer Studio House, Winter 1938/1939
Oskar Schlemmer in his Studio, 1939
Oskar Schlemmer with Sunflowers, 4 September 1938
Photographs © U. Jaïna Schlemmer
Castaway Modernism Basel’s Acquisitions of "Degenerate" Art. Kunstmuseum Basel
Analivia Cordeiro. From Body to Code, ZKM Karlsruhe
2,697
The Decision Makers
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Petition created on 18 September 2022