Art Blart

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz
19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

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One of the great pleasures of publishing this blog is that I get to research the life of an artist whose work I never knew before. Kurt Kranz is one such artist.

Many thankx to the the Bauhaus Dessau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

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Kurt Kranz
Perspective
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Lars Lohrisch / Abdruck mit Genehmigung der Kunsthalle

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Kurt Kranz
Vereinsamung
Dessau
1930
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

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Installation photograph of ‘Programming of Beauty’ by Kurt Kranz at the Bauhaus Dessau

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Kurt Kranz
Versinkende (Sinking one)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

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Kurt Kranz
Persischer Garten (Persian garden)
1970
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

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“The Bauhaus Dessau dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to the painter, graphic designer and photographer Kurt Kranz to mark his 100th birthday. In 1930, the then twenty-year-old lithographer came from Bielefeld to study at the Bauhaus Dessau, where he soon established himself as a pioneer of serial and generative methods. With his avant-garde work, Kranz’s methods anticipated those of later generations.

Inspired by a lecture by László Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Kranz came to the Bauhaus Dessau in April 1930. In Walter Peterhans’s photography class, Kranz began to experiment with photographic techniques and created some of the most striking abstract picture series to emerge from the Bauhaus. Alienated and abstracted faces and hands appear repeatedly in his dynamic picture series. These show Kranz’s early affinity for film as, page for page, the abstract forms interact with one another. Kranz drafted his first concepts for abstract films at the Bauhaus, although he was first able to realise these decades later in 1972.

The exhibition to mark the artist’s 100th birthday shows works from Kranz’s Bauhaus years and his later work as an advertising graphic designer, and focuses on a selection of his large picture cycles. Strikingly diverse leporellos dating from the 1960s onwards take centre stage, as do the so-called “Matrix-und Schiebebilder”.”

Text from the Bauhaus Dessau website

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Kurt Kranz
Selbstporträt en face (objektives Foto) (Self-portrait with face (objective photo))
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

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Kurt Kranz
Rasterfoto (Raster photograph)
1932
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

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Kurt Kranz
Schwarz : Weiß (Black: White)
1928–29
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Privatbesitz

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Kurt Kranz
Schwarz : Weiß (Black: White)
1928–29
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Privatbesitz

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Kurt Kranz
Schwarz : Weiß (Black: White)
1928–29
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Privatbesitz

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Kurt Kranz
Schrift Entwurf aus Satzmaterial (Writing draft from sentence material)
Dessau
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

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Kurt Kranz
Aus der Serie “Sieben Schritte zum symmetrischen Oval” (From the series “Seven steps to the symmetrical Oval”)
1982
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

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Kurt Kranz
Augenreihe (Eye rows)
1931 (montiert 1981) (1931 (1981 install))
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

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Kurt Kranz
Mund-Reihen (Mouth rows)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen
Foto: Ingrid Kranz, Wedel

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Bauhaus Dessau
Gropiusalle 38, Dessau, Germany

Opening hours:
daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Bauhaus Dessau website

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