Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Art Observed

Following the gallery’s exhibition of Sterling Ruby’s slurred, industrial run-off and massive assemblages earlier this summer, Hauser and Wirth New York returns for the first show of its fall season with a similarly inclined, yet considerably more restrained take on architectural and industrial forms.  This time, the work is Monika Sosnowska’s, and the subject is that of high architectural modernism, reinterpreting the forms and elements of “International Style” as developed and professed by landmark German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

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Wassily Kandinsky, Group with Crinolines (1909), via Art Observed

On view at the Guggenheim New York is an exhibition of early works by the pioneering Russian modernist Wassily Kandinsky, made between the years of 1901 and 1911, during the time he and his partner Gabriele Münter traveled extensively throughout Europe, Tunisia, and Russia.  The works, featuring a blend of Kandinsky’s developing lyrical style and his more early, studied figurative pieces and landscapes offer a strong look at an oft-overlooked part of the artist’s career.

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Vasily Kandinsky, Circles within a Circle (1923), Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
Photo Credit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Compiling one of the more ambitious exhibitions of work recently shown on the Russian avant-garde, the recently closed exhibition on the work of Vasily Kandinsky offered perhaps one of the best perspectives on the developing voice of one of the 20th century’s most vital painters.  Charting his move from early impressionist works to the conceptually rigorous formalism that he developed as a consequence of his broader exposure to the European art world after his move to Germany, From Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus, 1910-1925 is a fitting origins story for this influential artist.

Vasily Kandinsky (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Eugene Batz, “The Spatial Effects of Colors and Forms” from Kandinsky’s course (1929)

Bauhaus: Art as Life, on view at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, seeks to showcase not only the exceeding wealth of artistic production from this legendary school, but moreover to engage inspection of the cultural climate within which the foundation of modern design blossomed. The comprehensive collection of over 400 works, mined largely from the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, is the largest Bauhaus show in Britain in over 40 years, representing pieces from its radical founding in 1919 to its final closure in 1933, tracing the transitions in style, ideology and aesthetic through a chronological progression. The works featured include paintings, sculptures, photography, film, textiles, ceramics, theater and more—a diverse and expansive artistic output representing a period of high artistic innovation. From iconic Bauhaus master works to compositions by lesser known students, this exhibition encapsulates the notion of art as life, the inseparability of social community and artistic production, and the human experience of this artistic-social experiment. From furniture to puppetry, typography to photomontage, this diverse range of production signals the creative effluence from this beacon of modernism and avant-garde design in a show celebrating the playfulness of collaborative Bauhaus culture.

Otto Umbehr, Josef Albers and a group of students (1928)

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