Testa di profilo

1914

Called up for the Western Front

In 1914 Schlemmer is enlisted to fight on the Western Front in the First World War; after he is wounded he is moved to a position with the military cartography unit in Colmar, where he lives until 1918.

1919

Turns to sculpture; exhibition at the Der Sturm gallery

In 1919 Schlemmer turns to sculpture and holds an exhibition of his work at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin.

1920

Gropius invites Schlemmer to the Weimar Bauhaus

Walter Gropius invites Schlemmer to the Bauhaus in Weimar: by one account he runs the mural-painting and sculpture departments, by another he first heads the metal workshop and from 1922 the sculpture workshop.

1929

Leaves the Bauhaus and moves to Breslau

Because of the heightened political atmosphere in Germany at the end of the 1920s, and in particular the appointment of the Marxist architect Hannes Meyer as Gropius’s successor, Schlemmer resigns from the Bauhaus and takes a job at the Breslau Academy of Art and Applied Art.

1933

Forced to resign from the Berlin school under Nazi pressure

After the National Socialists come to power in 1933, Schlemmer’s contract with the Berlin United Schools of Art is terminated and he is forced to resign under pressure from the Nazis. His style changes too: the works become smaller, the figures move closer together, and the forms become softer and rounder, in warm, often dark colours.

13 Nisan 1943

Died