Walter Dexel (1890-1973): Construction I 1924

Artist
Walter Dexel
 
Title
Construction I 1924
 
Medium
Woodcut 
 
Material 
Paper
 
Dimensions
16 x 13.2 cm
 
Editor
Edition Panderma, Basel
 
Year
1966, published 1977
 
Signature
Signed in pencil 
 
Provenance
Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel
Galerie von Bartha, Basel
Private Collection, Basel
 
Condition / Restauration 
mint archival condition 
 
Biography: 
Walter Dexel, born in 1890 in Munich and died in 1973 in Braunschweig, was a German art historian, exhibition maker, theorist, writer, and, above all, one of the proponents of Constructivism in painting and graphic design. Between 1910 and 1914, Dexel studied archeology and art history at the University of Munich, with Heinrich Wölfflin and Botho Graef among his teachers. Interested not only in theory, but also in practice of fine arts, Dexel conducted numerous study trips to Italy and Paris, which would have greatly influenced his early work with the spirit of post-impressionism and cubism. After the First World War, Dexel worked as an exhibition commissioner at the Kunstverein in Jena. Then, curating the group show on Constructivism, he immersed himself in the movement also as an artist. After 1933, in the time he had lectured at the School of Arts and Crafts in Magdeburg, his work was defined as "degenerate" by the Third Reich regime, thus the artist was forbidden from teaching, exhibiting, and creating. Later on, he abandoned painting for several years (until 1961), remaining active as a writer and publisher. Throughout the years, his body of work has been included in a flurry of individual and collective exhibitions, such as "Word and Image" (1968) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Revolution and Realism" (1978) at the Altes Museum in Berlin, and "Expressionist Utopias" (1993) at the LACMA in Los Angeles, all of which solidified his place among the most significant artists of his time.