bavarikon4UDescription
Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) was a painter, draughtsman, sculptor, stage designer and muralist and was appointed to the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius (1883-1969) as early as 1920. At first, Schlemmer was in charge of the workshop for mural painting, and later, as a mould master for the wood and stone sculpture workshop. He was also director of the stage workshop from 1923 until it closed in 1929. His concept of stage work, his theoretical and practical exploration of costumes are essential to understand the jointed doll he originally designed as a birthday present for one of his daughters.
Body forms were typified and broken down into elements in his costume design; he dressed his dancers in geometrically structured, sculptural costumes. Schlemmer describes "the egg shape of the head, the vase shape of the body, the club shape of the arms and legs, the spherical shape of the joints", which are found in the design of the jointed doll. As a result, the fully articulated miniature figure stands for Schlemmer’s basic objective: the analysis of the multi-layered relationship between body and space. There are only a few known, slightly varied examples of the jointed doll. They were made according to Schlemmer’s specifications by Josef Hartwig (1880-1956), who was master craftsman in the wood and stone sculpture workshop from 1921 to 1925.