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until 18.04. | #2311ARTatBerlin | Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation presents from 12th January 2018 the first part of the series 100 Years Bauhaus. Alfred Ehrhardt – Painting, Drawing, Graphics. Until the end of the year, three further parts of the exhibition series will be shown.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019, the Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation is planning four exhibitions dealing explicitly with the theme of the Bauhaus. At the beginning, the exhibition Alfred Ehrhardt – Painting, Drawing, Graphics will be shown, which Ehrhardt presents not as photographers, but as graphic artists and painters. In particular, it focuses on the pictorial work of his Bauhaus period, which, following a solo exhibition at the Dessau Meisterhaus Schlemmer in 2007, can now also be seen for the first time in Berlin.
During his stay at the Bauhaus in Dessau in the winter semester of 1928/29, Alfred Ehrhardt was a member of the circle of Bauhaus greats such as Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Lyonel Feininger, who had a decisive influence on his artistic work as well as his later teaching activities.
Alfred Ehrhardt, Ohne Titel (Abstrakte Komposition), undatiert,
Tempera auf Holz (Masonit), 41,4 x 41,4 cm, © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
His abstract compositions, created in Tempera on Masonite, illustrate a “sense of material” that Ehrhardt trained through a targeted study of the manifestations and laws of nature, as taught at the Bauhaus. He creates his paintings with various tools such as spatulas or brush handles, including the structure of the painting ground, so that an interplay of filigree line frameworks and pasty colour surfaces emerges. In his painted collages, it is only occasionally possible to discern a concrete figuration from the geometric elements, such as a figure reminiscent of Klee or a cosmic landscape in the style of Kandinsky. The exhibition also shows a series of graphic works and drawings in which Ehrhardt draws on his fund of reduced animal motifs, among other things. His one-line drawings, such as those of a female figure or a head, are also greatly simplified. Ehrhardt summarized his art and teaching experiences in the book Gestaltungslehre (1932), in which he particularly emphasizes the significance of the material as a “living, expressive fact (…) in the sense of the organic, i.e. in the sense of the creative.
Alfred Ehrhardt, Ohne Titel (Abstrakte Komposition), 1930,
Tempera auf Holz (Masonit), 44 x 36 cm, © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
Already in 1931 his artistic work was shown in a solo exhibition of the Hamburger Kunstverein – the only exhibition of paintings during his lifetime, before he switched to photography and film due to his dismissal from university service by the National Socialists. The oeuvre, comprising some 120 paintings, drawings and prints, was transferred to the Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation and is still partly in the custody of the family today. The exhibition Alfred Ehrhardt – Painting, Drawing, Graphics thus offers a rare insight into Ehrhardt’s otherwise inaccessible painterly and graphic genre.
On the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary, the Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation publishes the illustrated book Alfred Ehrhardt Fotografien, for which an edition of 30 copies in linen-bound cassette with analog platinum print will be published.
Vernissage: Friday, 11th January 2019, 19-21 Uhr – Curators: Stefanie Odenthal M.A., Dr. Christiane Stahl
Exhibition period: Saturday, 12th January – Thursday, 18th April 2018
Events related to the exhibition:
Wednesday, 27 February 2019, 19.00 h: Film screening “Vom Bauen der Zukunft – 100 Jahre Bauhaus”, in the presence of director Niels Bolbrinker
Sunday, 31 March 2019, 2 p.m.: Literature House of Photography: “The camel looked at the desert and recognized itself in the humps. Kirsten Fuchs’ somewhat different texts on Alfred Ehrhardt’s pictures”.
Upcoming exhibitions:
26/27 April to 7 July 2019: 100 years of bauhaus II : The Watt: David Batchelder | Alfred Ehrhardt
12/13 July to 15 September 2019: 100 years bauhaus III : preliminary course at the regional art school in hamburg 1930-1933: Fritz Schleifer | Alfred Ehrhardt
20/21 September to 22 December 2019: 100 years of bauhaus IV : The Curonian Spit: Kazimieras Mizgiris | Alfred Ehrhardt
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Exhibition 100 Years Bauhaus I – Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
