Photo digital collage by John Goto – In the foreground Malevich’s last will written whilst Berlin in 1927 (covering “death or permanent imprisonment”). On a balcony at the Bauhaus: Freidl Dicker-Brandeis (Bauhaus trained artist who died in Auschwitz), Malevich’s daughter Una, Walter Gropius and Aleksandr Gerasimov (Stalin’s “court painter”).

Following the steps of a favorite artist – Kazimir Malevich, I borrowed a book about Bauhaus from the French Institute. It proved to be a very interesting read – the story of a yet another failed European utopian thinking system induced by industrialisation, a subject so dear to me.

Malevich thought that his artistic and social ideas coincided with those of Bauhaus and had a though time getting permission to visit Germany in order to contact them and possibly get a job within the institution. In the end he met Gropius and Bauhaus published his work, “The Non-objective World”, in which he describes his teaching methods. Through this book, Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus and the De Stijl artists, his ideas influenced the course of art, design, and architecture throughout Europe. I have read in one of his biographies that he was quite disappointed with the fact that his theory didn’t seem to match the Bauhaus ideal, but I coucldn’t find any explanation and I’m still very curious to find out those important subtleties. At the first glance, his artistic concept, based on fundamental geometric forms, is not far from the Bauhaus school, but the sources of influence are indeed different.

Itten, the idealist mazdeist teacher, wearing the Bauhaus uniform that he designed. I couldn’t help thinking of Malevich’s suprematist paintings:

The Bauhaus type of atelier was to be found in other art education institutions in Germany, but there was a beautiful exception – the theater atelier.
(Costumes by Oskar Schlemmer for the “Triadic Ballet”)

Looking at the costumes designed by the Bauhaus students and teachers, I remembered Malevich’s costumes designed for the modernist drama “Victory over the Sun” (music by Mikhail Matiushin, text by the poet Alexei Kruchenykh). Here are some resemblances between the the Bauhaus style and Malevich’s:

Bauhaus – Xanti Schawinsky – Circus, stage project

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Kurt Schmidt – The man in front of his dashboard

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Kurt Schmidt, Friedrich Wilhelm Bogler and Georg Teltscher – “The Mecanic Balet”.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Dance of forms (Oskar Schlemmer, Werner Siedhoff, Walter Kaminsky).

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Dance of gestures.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Theater students wearing Schlemmer’s masques, exercising with simple accessories (equilibrism) on the Bauhaus stage.

A student wearing a masque and accessories of the Bauhaus dances.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”