Prior to the restoration of eleven paintings by the Bauhaus master Georg Muche, donated by Anneliese and Ludwig Steinfeld, these will be shown in a special exhibition by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation from 18 July to 9 August 2015.
Georg Muche, along with Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten, is one of the most important and bankable painters to have taught at the Bauhaus. Muche arrived at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919 and was, as the youngest of the masters, chiefly responsible for the weaving workshop until 1927. Walter Gropius sought him out personally for the Bauhaus. Previously in Berlin, Muche moved in the same circles as the writer, critic and gallery owner Herwarth Walden (“Der Sturm”) and was thus a member of the avant-garde elite in the early twentieth century. He eventually left the Bauhaus in 1927, having had a significant influence on the Haus Am Horn in Weimar, the preliminary course directed by Johannes Itten and the Stahlhaus on the Dessau-Törten housing estate. As a painter his early interest in abstract art was followed in the 1950s by a shift towards figurative art. His paintings are characterised by a vibrant and radiant use of colour, whereby only a few of his early works survived the war. This makes all the more valuable the 1915 painting “Das große Bild XX”, which may now be seen in the exhibition. This will be complemented by later paintings dating from the 1950s.
Muche, two of whose paintings were also shown in the NS exhibition of “degenerate art” in Munich in 1938, settled in the 1930s in Lower Rhine and taught textile art there for many years. In Wuppertal at the Institut für Malstoffkunde (Institute for painting materials science) he met together with Oskar Schlemmer and Willi Baumeister. After the war he continued to teach in Krefeld and worked as a painter of frescoes for the Landtag in Düsseldorf (1948) and others. Georg Muche died in 1987 in Lindau, Lake Constance.
The Muche donation originates from the collection of Anneliese and Ludwig Steinfeld of Schlüchtern. Ludwig Steinfeld (1917-1998) and Georg Muche were friends for many years. Steinfeld was quick to recognise Muche’s significance as an artist and bought his paintings. After the war Steinfeld laboriously gathered together his friend’s paintings, which had been strewn far and wide during the war years, in a small collection. Following the death of his widow Anneliese Steinfeld in 2014, the works were donated to the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. As a result, for the very first time the Foundation now owns a collection of paintings by this major Bauhaus painter. Previously owners of onlya small number ofMuche’sgraphics, the donation now paves the way for an exemplary exhibition of Georg Muche’s work.
For further information on the exhibition of the eleven paintings by Georg Muche, please visit the website of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.