Kurt Kranz (born 1910)

KURT KRANZ (born 1910) In our understanding the Bauhaus epitomizes formal discipline, expressed as it was by the laws of functionalism. But this is just one side of the coin: the creative impulses unleashed initially in Weimar (1919-25) and subsequently in Dessau (until 1932 when it was closed by the provincial administration under pressure of the Hitler party) went far beyond the vocabulary imposed by the ruler and the compass. When Kurt Kranz joined the student body in 1930 he had already explored a wide range of metamorphoses, set down in a book entitled "Abstrakte Formen". At the age of 15, when he began this work, he knew nothing about the Bauhaus and his knowledge of Modern Art was limited to a few reproductions of works by Marc and Kandinsky. The 56 "Abstrakte Formen" show Kranz's far-reaching ideas, all based on the principle of "transformability", by which he stood firm. This, being the very "leitmotif" of the Bauhaus movement, meant that his ideas fell on fertile ground. But from the outset he serialised this "transformability" in his own way, combining structured precision and dream-like fluidity in order to seize upon what Odilon Redon has called "the meaning of mystery", "d'etre tout le temps dans l'equivoque, dans les double, triple aspects des soupcons d'aspect (image dans image)..." Thinking in processes means to envision interconnections. This eventually led Kranz to anticipate the possibilities offered by the motion picture. Kranz blended two quite opposite strategies - one based on morphological cohesion, the other escaping into the fanciful and the unpredictable. The result is a kind of disciplined playfullness, flux and reflux, subtle innuendos and sudden interruptions: both free and yet restrained. Since Kranz never opted for one-way streets, we can read his "Leporello" both ways: from beginning to end, and then back to the beginning. Needless to say, that this concatenation of "germs" excluded finality as well as the static idea of a supreme achievement. This work is always both in progress and in regress. The idea of the Bauhaus was to reinvent the dialogue between architecture, fine arts and the so-called applied arts in an attempt to create a cohesive whole. Within his field Kranz however added an almost surrealist dimension. "Tout est comparable a tout" - this statement by Paul Eluard perfectly applies to his sequence of abstract forms, his photo-montages and his three dimensional object-pictures. Although Kranz keenly investigated the relationship between pure geometry and its surrealist contradictions, he avoided the dark sides of absurdity due to his innate serenity. Never did he let his world enter the abysmal chaos and go past the point of no return. Every pictorial idea sustains and supports the others in the series. This "chain of being" in some ways anticipates the electronically generated moving images of today. But whereas these virtual forms act voraciously - each phase annihilating the preceeding one - in the sequences of Kurt Kranz we enjoy a spectacle which guarantees each phase its survival within a permanent whole. Serenity is not the main aim of Modernism, and abundance does not fit into its puritannical and often iconoclastic rejections. Kranz does not oppose these ideas, but integrates them into his broad vision, without imposing any kind of hierarchy upon the shapes. He is essentially an optimist, and believes in the equality of all formal inventions and connections, raising "transformability" from being merely a means to an end to the status of being an end in itself, even if it is an end without an end. Werner Hofmann, March 1994

Details

Kurt Kranz (born 1910)

Marionetten

signed and dated lower right Kranz 29-30, pencil, charcoal, photocollage, watercolour and pen and red ink on paper, unframed
60 x 46 cm

Literature

Werner Hofmann (ed), Kurt Kranz, Das unendliche Bild, Hamburg 1990, p.41 p. 50 (ill.)

Exhibited

Bielefeld, Buch- und Kunsthandlung Fischer, Kurt Kranz, April 1931
Washington, Corcoran Gallery of art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today (circulation exhibition organised by the Smithsonian Institute), 1973, no. 4 (ill.)
New York, Cultural Centre, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1973, no. 4 (ill.)
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1974,no. 4 (ill.)
New Orleans, Museum of Art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1974, no. 4 (ill.)
Cambridge (Mass.), Hayden Gallery of Art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1974, no. 4 (ill.)
Logan, Dan. G. Hansen Memorial Museum, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1974, no. 4 (ill.)
Fl. Wayne, Museum of Art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1974, no. 4 (ill.)
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1975, no. 4 (ill.)
Milwaukee, Art Center, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1975, no. 4 (ill.)
Chicago, Art Institute, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1975, no. 4 (ill.)
Champaign, Krannet Art Museum, Kurt Kranz Bauhaus and today, 1975, no. 4 (ill.)
Hamburg, Galerie Dröschen, Kurt Kranz, October - November 1980
Berlin, Bauhaus Archiv, Kurt Kranz, 18 March - 8 June 1981
Bremen, Galerie Rolf Ohse, Kurt Kranz, Bauhaus und heute, 1984, (ill. p. 5)

Lot Essay

"During the period 1930-1933 when Kranz studied at Bauhaus he made several photomontages. Their surrealist mounting represents the reactions to the particular conditions of the period. There was the severe discipline of the basic courses with Jozef Albers, the seminars with Paul Klee and Kandinsky, the whole purist idea of he Bauhaus. Added to this, the pressures of an anti-artistic environment. From the reaction against all this resulted the photo-mountings. They show impossibly vast spaces in rigid perspective. Quite an arsenal of photocuttings from the pages of periodicals are rearranged in new context." (See exh. cat.)

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