Lot 47: OTTO WERNER (1892-1964)

OTTO WERNER (1892-1964)
ILLUMINATING SCULPTURE, 1921-22
executed under the supervision of Johannes Itten in the Stone Sculpture Workshop of the Bauhaus, Weimar, carved, incised and perforated alabaster obelisk, of tapering triangular profile, on carved and chamfered alabaster platform wired for electricity
17¼ in. (44 cm.) high, including base; base approximately 7 1/8 in. (18 cm.) wide
base of obelisk with stylised O W monogram within cartouche, the underside of the platform incised, Sculptured (sic.) by Otto Werner, Sculptor, Weimar, Made in Germany

Das Frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten, Weimar, 1994

Das Frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten, Weimar, 1994, cat. no. 481

Otto Werner, thence by descent.

ANOTHER PROPERTY

TWO IMPORTANT BAUHAUS SCULPTURES (LOTS 47-48)


The son of a porcelain modeller, Otto Werner was with the first roster of students to enroll in 1919 in Walter Gropius's newly established progressive arts and crafts school - the Bauhaus. Nine years the junior of Gropius and four years younger than his initial master in the Workshop for Stone Sculpture, Johannes Itten, Werner was already a relatively mature student. Following Itten's departure from the Bauhaus in 1922, Oskar Schlemmer assumed artistic directorship of the Workshop, with Josef Hartwig acting as the technical supervisor from 1921-25. In 1924, his studies complete, Werner left the Bauhaus to establish his own independent sculpture workshop in Weimar, which remained active until 1941. In 1951 Werner left Weimar, then part of the GDR, to settle in the Bundesrepublik.

The illuminated and carved alabaster sculptures are unique examples of works produced in one of the smaller workshops of the Bauhaus, where under the guidance of some of the leading practitioners and theorists the Bauhaus ideology began to crystallise. The conscious primitivism and angular carving, of the Wood Carving Workshop, which was also under Itten's directorship, for the Haus Sommerfeld (1921-1922), and Marcel Breuer's folkish 'African' chair (1922), are reflected in the random hieroglyphic surface of Werner's obelisk. The obelisk, an Egyptian form associated with timelessness and memorialisation, would appear to have been stimulated by Itten's anti-pragmatic mysticism and support for instinctive automatism in the creative process. By contrast, the rigorously architectural sculpture, produced whilst under Oskar Schlemmer's tutelage, displays a confident and assertive massing of volumes that suggests a finite control of both medium and process, and anticipates the machine aesthetic of the later Art Deco period. Produced within a few months of each other, these sculptures are unique and significant artefacts of the highly progressive, experimental and influential identity of the early Bauhaus.
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