Performed by Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Ray Sweeten, Genevieve White, and Stephanie Wuertz
Q&A follows the performance
Microscope is very pleased to present a live performance of Kurt Schwerdtfetger’s "Reflektorishe Farblichtspiele (Reflecting Color-Light-Play)” (1922/66) in connection with a solo exhibition of the work at the gallery through March 15th.
The piece — which consists of up to five movements, or “Sätze” including: "Vegetativ Form," "Bauhaus 1922,” “Streifen und Gitter” (Stripes and Grids), “Rotes Quadrat” (Red Square), and “Hommage à Oskar Schlemmer” — utilizes a large hand-built cube projection apparatus in which performers activate stencil shapes and a switchboard of colored lights to form a complex, abstract light play appearing on its screen surface.
The performance features Tessa Hughes-Freeland on the keyboard-like light system; Genevieve White and Stephanie Wuertz manipulating the stenciled shapes, and Ray Sweeten on live sound augmentations to the 1966 soundtracks by Wolfgang Roscher, as well as offering additional visual support.
A Q&A with the performers will follow the performance. More info on Reflektorische Farblichtspiele below.
It was in 1922 that the then 25-year-old artist and student debuted the work as part of the Bauhaus Lantern Festival at the home of Vasily Kandinsky.
“While conceptualizing a shadow play titled “Days of Genesis” for a Lantern Festival it seemed necessary to use not only shadow figures but color shapes on black as well. At that very moment I perceived the idea of color-light plays in abstract form with free-moving, superimposed shapes of colored light moving in time.” – Kurt Schwerdtfeger, 1962
"Reflektorishe Farblichtspiele" has in recent years received wider recognition as a revolutionary work of the Bauhaus movement and of 20th century film, sculpture, and performance. It most recently appeared at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (March - June 2019) and at Paul Klee Center in Bern (Sept 2019 - January 2020) as part of the international exhibition “bauhaus imaginista,” curated by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson, in connection with 100 years of Bauhaus celebrations and where it was one of four central works around which the exhibition was formed.
The current rendition uses an apparatus built in 2016 by Daniel Wapner, in collaboration with the gallery, for “Dreamlands: Expanded,” a series of one-night performances that took place at the gallery as part of the Whitney Museum’s “Dreamlands, Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016” and was the first re-staging of the work in 50 years. The visual score and sound elements are based on documentation of the 1966 presentation as well as original notes and other information from the Schwerdtfeger Estate.
Although no recordings of the original performance exist, photographs of images generated from that performance appeared in the first Bauhausbuch of works from 1919-1922, in MoMA’s 1938/39 exhibit “Bauhaus 1919-1928” as well as in the more recent “Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity”, 2009/10.
Special thanks to Chrissie Iles, Paula and Stefan Schwerdtfeger, and Daniel Wapner.
Kurt Schwerdtfeger was born in 1897 in the German city of Puddiger (now Podgórki, Poland). Schwerdtfeger in 1919 moved first to Königsberg, then Jena to pursue studies in art history and philosophy. In 1920, he joined the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar as a sculptor and studied under Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten. Schwerdtfeger focused on his own work, while at the same time contributing commissioned works to festivals and exhibitions, in the context of which his “Reflecting Color-Light-Play” (Reflektorische Farblichtspiele) came to life and was first performed in the apartment of Wassily Kandinsky in 1922.
As a representative of the students, he participated in meetings and intervened in the planning and implementation of the Bauhaus Week. In 1924, Schwerdtfeger left the Bauhaus in protest of his work being appropriated by a fellow student. Schwerdtfeger began working at the newly founded Kunstgewerbeschule Stettin in 1925 and became head of the sculpture department at the Stettin School of Applied Arts two years later. In that period Schwerdtfeger exhibited his work among others in the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, alongside works by artists from the group “Berlin Secession” as well as the French “UAM” (Union des artistes moderne).
At the time he also became a member of the Novembergruppe (November Group), the Werkbund (a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists established in 1907) and later of the artist federation Künstlerbundes Neues Pommern (New Artists Association of Pomerania). In 1937, he was dismissed as teacher and his artworks in museum collections were branded as “degenerate art” and removed by the Nazis. Nevertheless, he set up a studio in Stettin and continued to work as an artist.
In 1946, Schwerdtfeger was appointed professor at the Alfeld College of Education, in Alfeld, Germany and was in contact with Paul Citroen, Walter Gropius, Gregor Rosenbauer and Lothar Schreyer, among others. Schwerdtfeger reconstructed “Reflektorisches Farblichtspiele“ with his students between 1964 and 1966 for a performance at the Kunstverein Hannover that took place just a few weeks after his death on August 8, 1966.
Schwerdtfeger’s work appeared in the exhibitions “Bauhaus: 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1938/39; in “50 jahre bauhaus” at Wuertembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany in 1968, which then traveled to Amsterdam, Paris, New York and Tokyo, among others. In Alfeld, an assembly hall has been named after him, and his sculpture “Saint Francis” is publicly displayed. Schwerdtfeger’s work is in public collections in Berlin and Stettin as well as in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, among others.