In an indeterminate place

Win­dow Paint­ing XII

[I] have recently com­pleted a series of pic­tures, inspired by what I see right around me: views from my win­dow into the neigh­bor­ing win­dow, done in the evening between nine and half-past nine, shortly before the black­out. When night is falling and clashes with the scraps of inte­rior beige-orange-brown-white-black, it pro­duces amaz­ing opti­cal effects. (LDOS, 399)

In spring of 1942 Oskar Schlem­mer, then liv­ing in Wup­per­tal where he worked in a paint fac­tory, began a series of new paint­ings. As noted in the diary entry quoted above, these new works rep­re­sented scenes glimpsed by Schlem­mer from his win­dow at night­fall. Unsur­pris­ingly per­haps, he gave the paint­ings the col­lec­tive title Fen­ster­bilder or “Win­dow Paint­ings” and described their gen­e­sis in a let­ter to his wife:

I got intrigued by this win­dow. Some­thing is always going on, some­times a pot is being put out, some­times some­thing is being done at the table, iron­ing, kneed­ing cake dough…, then the table is being set and flow­ers are put on it. Look, the suit is being brushed and pat­ted, I know that already. Later the hus­band will be com­ing home, and then the win­dow will be closed and the light turned on, and then it will get a lot more inter­est­ing, because then one sees only their shad­ows behind the cur­tain… I have painted that. (quoted in OSMA, 33 · Trans­la­tion: Frauke von der Horst)

Schlem­mer painted a total of eigh­teen “Win­dow Paint­ings” and one “Dou­ble Win­dow Paint­ing”  between April and June of 1942. As Jur­rie Poot has explained, four­teen of them are mixed media works “con­sist­ing of oil and/or water­color over pen­cil and col­ored chalk on card­board,” while three of the four oth­ers, painted in Sehrin­gen and Stuttgart, were made using oils on oiled paper. (OSMA, 33) They are remark­able for the quiet, under­stated beauty of their sim­ple com­po­si­tions as well as for the unevent­ful quo­tid­ian scenes they depict. The lat­ter must have been par­tic­u­larly poignant for Schlem­mer, who was liv­ing far from his wife and chil­dren at the time. Despite their sub­dued palette and mood, the Fen­ster­bilder were a source of excite­ment to Schlem­mer, as he noted in his diary on May 12, 1942:

Con­stant flow of new ideas. In the future I shall do more and write less.

The win­dow paint­ings: the mir­a­cle of the vis­i­ble, the mys­tique of the opti­cal. At least in its un-inventability, i.e. one can­not invent that sort of thing. Source of inspi­ra­tion for free composition.

Con­cern­ing the win­dow paint­ings: I feel like a hunter who goes stalk­ing every evening between nine and ten o’clock. And then: here I can be sure that I am only paint­ing what I see, but the impor­tant ques­tion is how I see it and espe­cially how I paint it, and that brings up the old ques­tion: “what is truth?’ Truth in art – truth in nature… (LDOS, 400)

The “Win­dow Paint­ings” should have rep­re­sented a piv­otal moment in Schlemmer’s life, inspir­ing and ener­giz­ing him at a dif­fi­cult moment, and pro­vid­ing impe­tus for new work. Though they seemed to sug­gest a new begin­ning for him, in fact they bring his work to a close. Phys­i­cally ill and suf­fer­ing from depres­sion in his final years, Schlem­mer, who died the fol­low­ing April, would never achieve the same clar­ity of vision and feel­ing that he did in these works. Sens­ing this per­haps, Schlem­mer reflected back on the Fen­ster­bilder in late 1942:

“In Wup­per­tal I painted a lit­tle thing, no larger than a child’s hand, a few spots of color, a mem­ory of a win­dow inte­rior – every­one who sees it is cap­ti­vated, and I myself must say: within this tiny space I have offered my utmost. Is it the wis­dom of age, to ele­vate such restraint to a principle?

[…]

I did the ‘win­dow paint­ings’ in a state of real ent­hou­si­asm, and it is curi­ous that my feel­ings appar­ently have a direct impact on the beholder, always the best touch­stone for the value of a work of art. […]

One more thing, the win­dow pic­tures were drawn from real­ity; they offer impres­sions of the exter­nal world, seen, to be sure, through a ‘lov­ing tem­pera­ment.’” (LDOS, 405-6)

You can see a selec­tion of “Win­dow Paint­ings” in the Fen­ster­bild gallery, and read more about them here.

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• schlemmer.org
• bauhaus-archiv

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Tagged: Oskar Schlemmer, painting, windows

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