Oskar Schlemmer - Scritti sul teatro - 1982

Oskar Schlemmer. Writings on theater. Edited by Marina Bistolfi. Introductions by Giulio Carlo Argan. Milan, Feltrinelli, 1982. First edition. cm 22.5 x 22, hardcover with dust jacket, case, pages 246. 16 color plates and 100 black-and-white illustrations. In very good condition - slight signs of time. Auction without reserve!!!!


Oskar Schlemmer (Stuttgart, September 4, 1888 – Baden-Baden, April 13, 1943) was a German painter and sculptor. From the very beginnings of his career, he adhered to the Bauhaus in Weimar (later in Breslau and Charlottenburg) where he directed the culture and theater section from 1923.[1]

His Triadic Ballet, with original mechanical inventions of a surreal flavor, achieved lively success and had many repercussions in German theatrical scenography, which he had sought to reform in order to give full emphasis to the purity of the human figure.

In painting, starting from a Cubist syntax, he developed a style between classical and purist akin to that of the Paris School and found the happiest symbiosis of architecture-painting in the mural paintings, aptly called Mauerbilder; in the last decade of his activity he arrived at a rigorous purist abstraction.

"Art and Theory of Art" is a famous Feltrinelli series published starting in the 1970s. The volumes of this historic series are immediately recognizable by their large square format, the cloth-backed cover protected by a dust jacket, and above all by the distinctive yellow spine bearing the titles in black. This series was foundational for the history of art criticism in Italy, as it gathered in monumental, rigorous, richly illustrated editions all the writings of the greatest pioneers of modern art and the avant-gardes.
Vasily Kandinsky – All Writings (published in 2 volumes). It includes fundamental theoretical texts such as Point and Line in the Plane and On the Spiritual in Art, in addition to the unpublished Bauhaus courses, poems and theatrical writings.
René Magritte – All Writings (edited by André Blavier). A colossal collection of over 700 pages that includes letters, manifestos, aphorisms and reflections on the Belgian master’s surrealism.
Piet Mondrian – All Writings (edited by Harry Holtzman). The volume collects the entire theoretical production and the essays on Neoplasticism by the Dutch painter.
Carlo Carrà – All Writings (edited by Massimo Carrà). A fundamental work for understanding Futurism and the evolution toward Metaphysical painting in Italy.
Umberto Boccioni – Writings, published and unpublished (edited by Zeno Birolli). The complete collection of diaries, letters and theoretical manifestos of the paramount exponent of Plastic Futurism.
Man Ray – All Writings (edited by Janus, published in the early ’80s). The definitive anthology of the artist’s literary texts, wordplay and photographic and Dadaist reflections.
Kazimir Malevich – Writings (edited by Andrei B. Nakov). The key theoretical texts related to the birth of Suprematism.
Paul Klee – Theory of Form and Figurative Art (edited by Jürg Spiller). Although not titled "All Writings", it fully belongs to the series with the same graphic design and collects the artist’s famous lectures and theoretical notes.