Multilayer character and harmony of composition

An exposition at Minsk Contemporary Fine Art Museum features experimental photos by Bauhaus students — the first higher education establishment to train industry painters, which was founded in Weimar (Germany) in 1919. The exhibition features student works created for private collections and for advertising industrial products using various methods — montage and collage, snapshot photography and portrait, fade-in and photo plastics.

Kurt Kranz’s “Series of Eyes” and Lбszlу Moholy-Nagy’s “Series of Mouths” depict the diversity of human moods and senses. Paul Citroen’s “Allanoh”, which used a scratched negative, images a girl at various stages of her life, while shots by Georg Muche and Albert Hennig allow seeing harmony in a mixture of multiple materials.

While opening the exhibition, museum director, Belarus People’s Painter Vasiliy Sharangovich noted, the exposition, which looks fresh and modern, shows a little-known page of Bauhaus history. “The education establishment has ever been associated with projects by world’s most famous architects and the dawn of the modern design. However, the present exhibition demonstrates Bauhaus students’ achievements in photo art with great aesthetic and artistic value”, believes Vasiliy Sharangovich. He regretted that Bauhaus was closed when the Nazi came to power in Germany.

According to Minsk’s Goethe Institute Director Katrin Ostwald-Richter, to show the multilayer character as well as various possibilities and applications of photography in Bauhaus, the exhibition was compiled from works of a maximum number of painters, with the most prominent of them being represented with a small number of works and the less prominent ones — with interesting photos. “Unknown photos are placed next to well-known ones to show the typical qualities of photography — breadth and artistic conciseness”, noted Katrin Ostwald-Richter.

Marat Gorevoy