Kandinsky's Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century @ Museum Barberini, Postdam

Kandinsky's Universe: 

Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century

Museum Barberini, Postdam

February 15 - May 18, 2025

Wassily Kandinsky

White Cross, 1922

Oil on canvas, 100,5 × 110,6 cm

Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venedig 

(Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)

László Moholy-Nagy

Composition Z VIII, 1924

Distemper on canvas, 114 × 132 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie

Piet Mondrian

Composition with Yellow and Blue, 1932

Oil on canvas, 55 × 55 cm

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection; 

Acquired with the generous support of 

Hartmann P. and Cécile Koechlin-Tanner, Riehen

The Museum Barberini is presenting the exhibition Kandinsky's Universe. Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century. The exhibition is the first to highlight the links between geometric-abstract art movements such as Constructivism, De Stijl and Optical Art and focuses on Wassily Kandinsky as a central figure of abstraction.

At the beginning of the 20th century, painting underwent a profound transformation. Artists no longer wanted to depict the visible; they aspired to a new visual language that reduced artistic expression to an interplay of colors, lines, and shapes. Geometric Abstraction viewed these elements as a visual language that reflected the modern world and transcended national boundaries. Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century spans six decades and showcases how Geometric Abstraction found radical expression in all its variations in Europe and the USA.

Wassily Kandinsky

Above and left, 1925

Oil on cardboard, 70 × 50 cm

Private collection

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Twelve Spaces with Planes, Angular Bands, 

and Laid with Circles, 1939

Oil and pencil on canvas, 80.5 × 116 cm

Kunsthaus Zürich; Gift from Hans Arp, 1958

Miriam Schapiro

Jigsaw, 1969

Acrylic on canvas, 203.2 × 183.2 cm

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 

Purchase, with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Harry Kahn

The exhibition features 125 artworks by 70 artists, among them twelve paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and works by Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Barbara Hepworth, El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely. Among the more than thirty international lenders are The Courtauld, London, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art in Geneva and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Curator of the exhibition: Sterre Barentsen, Museum Barberini

MUSEUM BARBERINI

Humboldtstraße 5–6 , Alter Markt , 14467 Potsdam  

www.museum-barberini.de

Yuichi Idaka and László Moholy-Nagy, photographs from 1925 to 1946 @ Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn - War Bonds

War Bonds

Yuichi Idaka and László Moholy-Nagy, 

photographs from 1925 to 1946

Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn

March 15 – May 6, 2023

While many may have heard of László Moholy-Nagy—the legendary Hungarian artist and photographer best known for his work at the Bauhaus, and for the 1937 founding of the New Bauhaus, later called the Institute of Design in Chicago—fewer know of Yuichi Idaka. The son of Japanese immigrants, Idaka studied at Moholy-Nagy’s school from 1942 to 1945. In 1945, Idaka was hired by Moholy-Nagy to teach film and photography at the school. During the time, at Moholy-Nagy’s request, Idaka printed a number of images that Moholy-Nagy had made in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. These prints, alongside Idaka’s work from the 1940s, are the subject of the exhibition.

Idaka’s close collaboration with Moholy-Nagy took place during a brutal time for Japanese Americans. The United States’ internment of Japanese people began in 1942 and ended in 1946, and anti-Japanese persecution was rampant. One can only imagine that Moholy-Nagy—as a Jewish person who had fled Nazi Germany less than a decade prior—saw echoes in the U.S. of what he had just left behind in Europe. (Moholy-Nagy’s work was in fact featured in the infamous “Degenerate Art”exhibition organized by the Nazi Party in 1937, which purported that such art was of a primitive, inferior quality.) Moholy-Nagy, almost 20 years Idaka’s senior, seems to have taken the young photographer under his wing and supported Idaka’s creative output during a time of real political danger.

As if to encapsulate this parallel, Moholy-Nagy asked Idaka to print images of Germany that he had taken not long before leaving the country for good. In one oblique photograph shot from the Berlin Radio Tower (perhaps the only existing print of this image, as the negatives are believed to have been lost) the line of a fence curves and bisects the landscape, a dizzying abstraction of the snow-covered ground. Idaka’s later curving abstractions—photograms à la Moholy-Nagy—reflect this geometry, which he then brings with him to the streets of Chicago and beyond. In the gallery, the two artists’ work is exhibited side by side, perhaps for the first time since 1951, when both photographers were featured in the “Abstraction in Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a Hungarian artist and a faculty Bauhaus Master from 1923-1928. In 1937, Moholy-Nagy founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago, since 1944 known as the Institute of Design, which in 1949 became a degree granting department at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Moholy-Nagy wrote several books including Painting, Photography, Film (1927) and Vision in Motion (1947). In 2003, the Moholy-Nagy Foundation was created to foster and share knowledge about the artist’s life and work. In 2016, he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Yuichi “Eugene” Idaka (1914-2012) was born to Japanese immigrants in Seattle, WA. After spending significant time during his childhood in Japan, he moved to Chicago in 1928 and helped run a Japanese Camera Club in the city. Idaka studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago from 1942-45 and taught their part-time from 1945-47 while working as a freelance photographer. He opened his own photography and design studio at 49 West Ontario – along with Angelo Testa and Edgar Bartolucci, fellow students at the Institute of Design – and later specialized in architectural photography. His work was featured in publications including Florida Architecture magazine, Architectural Digest, and The New York Times.

HIGHER PICTURES GALLERY

16 Main Street, Ground Floor, Brooklyn, New York 11201

www.higherpictures.com

Highlights From Phillips Photographs Auction, Phillips, New York

Highlights From Phillips Photographs Auction

Phillips, New York

October 7, 2021

László Moholy-Nagy

Photogram, 1920s

Estimate: $300,000 - 500,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Phillips announces a selection of upcoming works from the first Photographs sale in the auction house’s new state-of-the-art gallery at 432 Park Avenue. Featuring nearly 250 lots, the sale takes place on 7 October, directly following the single-owner sale "Reframing Beauty: A Private Seattle Collection" and features works by László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Frank, Peter Beard, Chuck Close, Deana Lawson, and Hank Willis Thomas.

Sarah Krueger, Head of Photographs, New York, said, “The October Photographs auction brings together a selection of artists from 20th Century masters like László Moholy-Nagy and Ansel Adams to an impressive array of contemporary works by Alec Soth, Gregory Crewdson, Cindy Sherman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Vik Muniz. This sale highlights the tremendous creative breadth this collecting category has to offer.”

Leading the sale is László Moholy-Nagy’s "Photogram". This unique work dates to the early years of Moholy-Nagy’s career in photography when his explorations of the medium expanded its capabilities and informed his expansive understanding of its role in the creation of art for a new age. He made this image without a camera, by placing objects on or over the sheet of photographic paper and carefully directing the angle of light, creating an enigmatic composition that transcends the sum of its parts. Newly discovered in 2010, this photogram takes its place within an oeuvre remarkable for the consistency of the artist’s vision across all media.

Ansel Adams

The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942

Estimate: $100,000 - 150,000

Courtesy of Phillips

The large-format print of Ansel Adams’ virtuosic landscape, "The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming", comes from a limited edition commissioned in 1975 by Adams’ dealer Harry Lunn, and showcases Ansel Adams’ unmatched skills as a photographer of the American landscape and as a photographic printer.

Peter Beard

Prometheus figure with vultures feeding . . . Bacon Studio @ 7 Reece Mews, London SW7, 1976

Estimate: $120,000 - 180,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Epic in scale and masterful in execution, Peter Beard’s unique study of the interior of Francis Bacon’s London studio documents the creation of one of Francis Bacon’s masterpieces and illuminates the deep friendship between the two artists. Peter Beard’s panoramic image consists of three consecutive exposures on a strip of enlarged 35mm film and captures the central panel of Bacon’s lauded "Triptych", 1976. Taken as a whole, Peter Beard’s multi-panel photograph is a meditation on the passage of time and the inevitability of death, as well as on the potential of the artistic process to overcome mortality.

Robert Frank

U.S. 285, New Mexico, 1956

Estimate: $80,000-120,000

Courtesy of Phillips

The October Photographs auction also presents a choice selection of work from the collection of pioneering New Zealand gallerist Peter McLeavey (1936-2015), who essentially created the country’s art market in the 1960s. He had a special affinity for photography and assembled a collection of photographs that is deeply personal in meaning and world-class in quality, including an early print of Robert Frank’s "U.S. 285, New Mexico" and Dorothea Lange’s "The Road West, New Mexico", as well as work by Bill Brandt and Charles Clifford, among others.    

Deana Lawson

Ring Bearer, 2016

Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Also among the highlights is "Ring Bearer" by Deana Lawson, winner of the 2021 Hugo Boss Prize and subject of an ongoing Guggenheim exhibition. While borrowing elements of documentary photography and portraiture, Deana Lawson’s images are carefully crafted vignettes informed by her travels throughout the African diaspora. From the satin and lace ring pillow, to the family photos and play of textile patterns, every detail of "Ring Bearer" is full of intention and meaning.

Jiro Takamatsu

Photograph of Photograph, 1973

Estimate: $30,000-50,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Two rare early prints by Francesca Woodman will be offered on 7 October. Woodman’s photographs are celebrated for their critical dialogue with the history of art, the examination of the body, and the complexities of self-portraiture. While her life and career were short, her distinct body of work reveals her quick and impressive evolution as a photographer who drew inspiration from sources as varied as Surrealism, Conceptualism, and Post-Minimalism. Similarly influenced by these movements was Jiro Takamatsu whose dynamic practice established him as a leading influence in the Japanese conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 70s. In his "Photograph of Photograph" series, Jiro Takamatsu recontextualizes his own family photographs, elevating vernacular imagery to the level of fine art.

Walker Evans

Chicago, 1947

Estimate $30,000 - 50,000

Courtesy of Phillips

A strong selection of prints from the collection of the late New York gallerist Robert Schoelkopf (1927-1991) highlight Walker Evans’ sensitive and astute portrayal of life during and after the great depression.

The five photographs comprising Ruth Orkin’s "The Card Players, New York City" showcase the photographer’s ability to create, through a progression of images, a character study of depth, nuance, and humor. The early prints offered here are similar in size and presentation to those exhibited in the landmark Family of Man exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955.

Following the successful offering in the April auction is more property from the former owners of the Michelin-star-recipient Gotham Bar & Grill in Manhattan.  The group includes works by Vera Lutter and Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

Preceding the various owners sale on 7 October is "Reframing Beauty: A Private Seattle Collection". This relevant and socially minded collection includes works by Robert Adams, Peter Hujar and Nan Goldin, among others, and speaks to many current themes in contemporary discourse—be it climate change, the environmental impact of deforestation, the struggle for equal rights and representation for LGBTQIA+ and the ever-broadening definition of beauty.

Auction: 7 October 2021 | 11am & 2pm ET

Auction viewing: 2 - 6 October

Location: 432 Park Avenue, New York, NY

Click here for more information: 

https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY040221

PHILLIPS NEW YORK 

432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

www.phillips.com

The Photogram: 1918–1948, Ubu Gallery, NYC

The Photogram: 1918–1948

Ubu Gallery, New York

January 23 – March 6, 1999

Ubu Gallery presents The Photogram: 1918–1948, a survey of the historical development of a unique and beautiful photographic process – an abstract marriage of light and chemistry made without the objectifying presence of the camera. 

ARTISTS: Robert Disraeli, Frantisek Drtikol, Jane Edwards, Werner Feist, Gene Fenn, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Harold Leroy Harvey, Jindrich Heisler, Karol Hiller, Marta Hoepffner, Gyorgy Kepes, Edmund Kesting, Willy Kessels, Milos Korececk, Fred G. Korth, Jerzy Kujawski, E.L.T. Mesens, László Moholy-Nagy, Jean Mowat, Oskar Nerlinger, Margaret de Patta, Man Ray, David Robbins, Jaroslav Rössler, Theodore Roszak, Christian Schad, Arthur Siegel, Maurice Tabard, Stefan Themerson, Georg Trump, Luigi Veronesi, Andreas Walser, Georgii Zimin, Ziubkova

At its simplest, a photogram is essentially a one-of-a-kind negative image created by placing objects on a sheet of photographic paper that is exposed to light and then developed and processed in the manner of a normal photographic print. Although variants of this type of process date back to the origins of photography, the creative potential of the photogram went unrealized until unlocked by Christian Schad, a member of the original Zurich Dada group, in 1918. At the heart of the Dadaist aesthetic was the concept of creating a new art from the detritus of a “morally corrupt,” bourgeois society. Like the materials found in Kurt Schwitters’s collages, Christian Schad appropriated as his subject matter an eclectic array of found objects – discarded tickets, fabric, newsprint, string, etc. Tristan Tzara dubbed Schad’s series of small format photograms “Schadographs,” playing upon the name of their creator and the shadow aspect of the process.

In the early 1920s, Man Ray, Lázló Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky – working independently – pushed the medium past Schad’s collage-like photograms. Their most significant innovation was the introduction of a sense of depth or interior space obtained by varying the dimensionality, volume and translucence of the objects and the form and manner of the lighting sources. This approach fully exploited the fluidity of the process, imbuing the resultant photogram with an enigmatic presence at once familiar and comforting as well as foreign and disturbing. Full of startling juxtapositions, they provide a visual jolt by transforming the mundane into the mysterious.

While the aforementioned artists were the pioneers of the medium, almost immediately a host of other practitioners sharing similar concerns – masters and students, “plastic artists” and photographers, some formerly not visual artists at all – continued to explore the possibilities of the photogram. All were fascinated by its “non-objective” and “automatic” qualities – the process could be influenced at every step, but the results were largely unpredictable. This reflected the prevailing avant-garde sensibility of the period wherein artists sought to divorce themselves from “imperfect” human perception expressiveness of the materials. The exhibition at Ubu Gallery includes works by more than 25 of such artists who pushed the creative boundaries of the photogram during the 1918 – 1948 period.

UBU GALLERY

416 East 59 Street, New York, NY 10022

www.ubugallery.com