User:Hillbillyholiday/Articles/Josef Hartwig

1924 advertisement for Josef Hartwig's chess set

Bauhaus

Josef Hartwig, (born 1880 died 1956),

teacher at the Weimar Bauhaus.

His early style was coined by a period that had great joy in decoration, the Art Nouveau, even though he later attained a reduced style with the typical geometric features of the Bauhaus esthetic.

thirteen Josef Hartwig apprenticeship with the sculptor Simon Korn.

In his studio, which was equipped in a historicizing and eclectic manner, the sculptor prepared gypsum models for architecture projects that were, among others, commissioned by the municipal building department, thus the young Josef Hartwig came in contact with famous architects such as Theodor Fischer.

In 1897 architect August Endell entered the studio with a pencil sketch of an ornamental and abstract dragon that was supposed to be decoration of the Art Nouveau facade of the well-known photo studio Elvira in Munich. The then just seventeen year old Josef Hartwig was given the task to transfer the idea from the sketch to a three-dimensional structure, in the course of this project Hartwig was given a lot encouragement and helpful suggestions from Endell. The master piece can only be observed on photographs today, as Hitler had it destroyed.

Josef Hartwig studied sculpting at the Munich Academy under Balthasar Schmidt from 1904 to 1906, he managed to pay for his studies by working as an architectural sculptor. He also took classes in architecture, drawing and art history at the academy. His parent's death in 1906 was a decisive event in the life of Josef Hartwig. He would soon spend several unresting years in various cities, until he settled in Berlin in 1910, where he worked as a sculptor for some eleven years, being only interrupted by the much hated first world war. In 1921 Walter Gropius called him to the Weimar Bauhaus and made him head of the wood and stone sculpting workshop.

In the workshop Hartwig made mural plastics after abstract figurative drafts by Oskar Schlemmer. These works in the staircase of the workshop building were removed by the Weimar 'Bauhochschule' in 1928, as they were regarded as "needless ornaments". The geometrical additive Bauhaus chessboard counts among the best known Bauhaus works of Josef Hartwig. Josef Harting taught sculpting, geometry, perspective and lettering at the Frankfurt School of Arts, the Städelschule, as of 1925, after the Bauhaus had changed its location from Weimar to Dessau. In the following years, Hartwig worked together with important artists such as Gerhard Marcks, Georg Kolbe, Toni Stadler and Richard Scheibe and besides that also made numerous plastic works of his own. Worthwhile mentioning are the figures for a puppet play or an abstract owl made of Veronese marble. His Bauhaus colleague Gerhard Marcks raised a bronze monument in honor of Hartwig's powerful and creative art, by making "Hartwig's chiseling hand" the subject of one of his sculptures.

Besides sculpting, Hartwig also showed interest in restoration: From 1938 up until the end of World War II Hartwig was working as a restaurateur at the Städtische Galerie in Frankfurt, after 1945 he was master of the restoration workshop of the sculpture collection of the Frankfurt Liebieghaus. Josef Hartwig died in 1956 at the age of 76.

As a master of works in the stone and wood sculpture workshop, he worked at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1925. During this time, he collaborated with Oskar Schlemmer on the interior design of the Bauhaus Building and designed the Bauhaus Chess Set in 1923. Other works from this era include the sculpture "Eule" (Owl) of 1922. After the Bauhaus closed in Weimar, Hartwig went on to the school of art in Frankfurt and taught sculpture there until 1945. During the National Socialist era in Germany he was a member of the NSDAP. He worked as a master in the restoration workshop of the Städtische Skulpturengalerie (municipal sculpture gallery) in Frankfurt am Main until his death in 1956.

Chess set

Josef Hartwig, Bauhaus Chess Set (Model XVI), 1924 @Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design, Berlin (2073)

Josef Hartwig‘s chess set (Model XVI) fulfilled Walter Gropius’s requirement that an object must be practical, durable, inexpensive and beautiful. Hartwig, master of works at the Weimar wood and stone sculpture workshop, reduced the forms of his chess set to crosses, squares and circles, which consistently demonstrate the playing direction of the figures.

• Kunstler, Barton Lee (2004). The Hothouse Effect: Intensify Creativity in Your Organization Using Secrets from History's Most Innovative Communities. ISBN 9780814427507.

Owl

Josef Hartwig, Owl, 1922 @Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, (I 323 K)

He was friendly with Gerhard Marcks, the head of the ceramics workshop at the Bauhaus. The owl made of glazed stoneware may have been produced in the context of their friendship. It is carefully worked and signed by the artist, and can therefore in no sense be regarded merely as a preliminary study for the marble owl which Hartwig made a year later, now in the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin. The two sculptures are closely related formally. They are similar in their size and in the design, which emphasizes round shapes and soft lines.

References

• Crinson, Mark (2005-06-10). Urban Memory: History and Amnesia in the Modern City. ISBN 9781134315048. Memorial