Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop
16 Dec 2006 – 18 Feb 2007
Exhibition in Gallery 4
This focused exhibition explores how innovative photographic practice became central to the activity of the Bauhaus sculpture workshop in Weimar Germany.
Installation view of Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones Installation view of Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones
The sculpture workshop was a somewhat anomalous element of the influential Bauhaus school of art and design. Sculpture seemed out of touch with its unapologetically modernist outlook and struggled to find a coherent position within its pioneering programme. Towards the end of the 1920s photography provided a way out of this impasse.
Led by Joost Schmidt, a former Bauhaus student now appointed as ‘young master’, the new sculpture workshop emerged in 1928 as an experimental arena with photography at the centre of its practice. Such photography went far beyond a documentary relationship to sculptural objects, instead sparking a dialogue over the nature and function of sculpture in modernity.
Photography also proved a bridge between the esoteric traditions of sculpture and the materiality of mass culture by using photographs of sculpture for visual display and advertising. These strange and beautiful images became works of art in themselves.
Chosen by Professor Paul Paret of the University of Utah, this remarkable collection of little-seen vintage photographs from the Bauhaus sculpture workshop includes an intriguing mix of studio scenes and still lifes, abstract explorations of space, volume and perception, and studies and designs for advertising and exhibition stands.
Venue details
Venue address
Henry Moore Institute
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AH
United Kingdom
T: 0113 246 7467
Opening times
Galleries: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am - 5pm
Research Library: Monday to Saturday, 10am - 5pm; Sunday, 1 - 5pm
Archive of Sculptors' Papers: Tuesday to Friday, by prior appointment
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