From the mid-1920s until 1933, Paul Klee taught a design class for the weaving workshop of the Bauhaus, a German art school combining ne art and craft. Concurrent with his classroom interaction with student weavers, Klee began to use increasingly unusual fabrics in his paintings, including cotton, jute, and silk, to explore the interaction between paint and the many distinct textures of his supports. In late works such as Exotics, painted on coarse burlap, Klee recalled his formative journeys to Tunisia and Egypt in 1914 and 1928, respectively. While these trips to North Africa, then under occupation by France and Great Britain, originally positioned him as an adventurer in the eyes of his contemporaries, the rough-hewn, woven character of the painting’s support was an expression of his long-standing interest in weaving.

Exotics
oil on burlap
1939
Paul Klee
German
1879-1940

#paulklee #modernart #art #painting #handmade #vintageart #dated1939 #germanart #germanmodernism
#exotics #germany

From the mid-1920s until 1933, Paul Klee taught a design class for the weaving workshop of the Bauhaus, a German art school combining art and craft. Concurrent with his classroom interaction with student weavers, Klee began to use increasingly unusual fabrics in his paintings, including cotton, jute, and silk, to explore the interaction between paint and the many distinct textures of his supports. In late works such as Exotics, painted on coarse burlap, Klee recalled his formative journeys to Tunisia and Egypt in 1914 and 1928, respectively. While these trips to North Africa, then under occupation by France and Great Britain, originally positioned him as an adventurer in the eyes of his contemporaries, the rough-hewn, woven character of the painting’s support was an expression of his long-standing interest in weaving.

Exotics
oil on burlap
1939
Paul Klee
German
1879-1940

#art #modernart #paulklee #oil #burlap #painting #abstractart ##modernpainting #abstractpainting
#handmade #dated1939 #bauhaus #germany

A former student at Germany’s Bauhaus, Xanti Schawinsky escaped the political unrest in Europe by traveling to the United States, where Josef Albers arranged a teaching appointment at Black Mountain College. The charismatic, avant-garde émigré taught art and stage studies there from 1936 until 1938, when conflict among the college’s faculty prompted him to leave for New York. Schawinsky spent the balance of his career in the city, working as both a fine and graphic artist. In this untitled mixed media drawing, opaque and transparent shapes are suspended in time and space against a gradient background, challenging the viewer’s perspective and defying the two-dimensionality of the paper. Evocative of a stage scrim or backdrop, the surrealistic work recalls Schawinsky’s interdisciplinary theater performances at Black Mountain College.

Untitled
Mixed media on paper

14 x 20 1/2 inches

1939
Xanti Schawinsky

#xantischawinsky #untitled #dated1939 #art #modernart #abstractart #modernism #moderndesign

Mexican advertising art from the late 1930s published in "Publicidad en México" in 1939.

#mexico #publicidadenmexico #dated1939 #book #advertisingart #art #mexicanart #hechoenmexico