HANS RICHTER
curated by Timothy
Bensan
Martin-Gropius-Bau
Niederkirchnerstr. 7 - Berlin
26/3/2014 -
3/6/2014
The ceuvre of Hans Richter (1888-1976) spanned nearly seven
decades. Born in Berlin, he was one of the most significant champions of
modernism. Berlin, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Moscow and New York were the major
stations of his life. He was a painter and draughtsman, a Dadaist and a
Constructivist, a film maker and a theoretician, as weil as a great teacher. His
great scroll collages remain icons of art history to this day. His work is
characterised by a virtually unparalleled interpenetration of different artistic
disciplines. The link between film and artwas his major theme. Many of the most
famous artists of the first half of the twentieth century were among his
friends.
"Hans Richter: Encounters from Dada to Today" is the title of one
of his books, which appeared in the 1970s. ln post-war West Germany it was
preceded by a rediscovery of this significant artist, who was hounded by the
Nazis and whose work was shown as part of the infamaus "Degenerate Art"
exhibition of 1937. Now, for the first time since the 1980s, an exhibition is
being dedicated to this great Berlin ortist in his native city. lt includes over
140 works, including his major films and some fifty works by artists whom he
influenced. Hans Richter worked with multimedia in an era when this term hadn't
even been invented. He regarded film as part of modern art. "The absolute film
opens your eyes to what the camera is, what it can do, and what it wants."
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art developed the exhibition in cooperation
with the Martin-Gropius-Bau and the Centre Pompidou Metz. Timothy Bensan is the
curator. lt demonstrates how Richter comprehended his working style, which
bridged many disciplines, and what impact his work had on the art of the
twentieth century.
Over the course of ten chapters, the exhibition describes
the artist's extensive body of work: Early Portraits I War and Revolution I Dada
I Richterand Eggeling I Magazine "G" I Malevieh and Richter I Film und Foto
(FiFa) I Painting I Series I Confronting the Object. Significant avant-garde
works along with films, photos and extensive documentary materialstransform this
exhibition into an important art event.
Hans Richter was active in the
broad field of the Europeon avant- garde beginning in the 1910s. Not only art,
but also the new medium of film interested him from the very start of his
artistic career. ln 1908 Hans Richter began his studies at the School of Fine
Arts in Berlin. He switched to Weimar the following year. ln 1910 he studied at
the "Academie Julian" in Paris. Storting in 1913 he was associated with Herwarth
Walden's gallery "Der Sturm" and became acquainted with the artists of the
"Brücke" and the "Blauer Reiter". He distributed Marinetti's "Futurist
Manifeste" to hackney drivers in Berlin. ln 1914 he also drew for Franz
Pfemfert's magazine "Die Aktion" and was called up to military service in the
summer of that year. ln 1916, having suffered severe wounds, he travelled to
Zurich ("an island in a sea of fire, steel and blood") where, tagether with
Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball and others, he founded the Dada movement, about which
he would one day write: " ... it was a storm that broke over the artofthat time
just as the war broke over the peoples."
ln 1918 he met Viking Eggeling,
with whom he conducted his first film experiments as precursors of "abstract
film". Both dreamt of discovering a universallanguage within film which could
promote peace among human beings. ln 1919 Richter served aschairman of the
"Action Committee for Revolutionary Artists" in the Munich Soviet Republic. He
was arrested shortly after the entry of Reichswehr troops. His mother lda
secured his release.
Richter's first film, "Rythmus 21" in 1921, was a
scandal - the audience attempted to beat up the pianist. Moholy-Nagy regarded it
as "an approach to the visual realisation of a light-space-continuum in the
movement thesis". The film, which is now recognised as a classic, also attracted
the attention of Theo von Doesburg, who invited Richter to work on his magazine
"De Stijl". ln 1922 Richter attended two famous congresses where many of the
most significant avant-gardists of the era assembled: The "Congress of
International Progressive Artists" in Düsseldorf and the "International Congress
of Constructivists and Dadaists" - the Dada movement was dismissed on this
occasion. ln 1923 Richterand other artists founded the short-lived but
celebrated Magazine "G" (for "Gestaltung", i.e. design), which sought to build a
bridge between Dadaism and Constructivism. Prominent participants included Arp,
Malevich, EI Lissitzky, Mies van der Rohe, Schwitters and van Doesburg.
ln
1927 Richter worked with Malevich, who was then visiting Berlin for his first
large exhibition, on a - naturally, "suprematist" - film, which, however, was
never completed due to the political situation. ln 1929 Richter curated the film
section of the famous FiFa exhibition (Film und Foto), a milestone in the
history of the cinematic and photographic arts. More than 1,000 photos were
presented - curated by, among others, Edward Weston and Edward Steichen for the
USA and EI Lissitzky for the USSR. More than sixty silent films were shown,
including works by Duchamp, Egeling, Leger, Man Ray and Chaplin. This important
exhibition, initiated by the German Werkbund (which was founded in 1907), was
also shown in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, which in those days was called "the former
Museum of Applied Arts" - a fact that is rarely mentioned in current
photographic histories. On this occasion, Richter published his first film book:
"Film Enemies of Today, Film Friends of Tomorrow."
That same year, the first
"Congress of Independent Film" was held in the remote Swiss castle of "La
Sarraz": Hans Richter was invited along with Sergei Eisenstein, Bela Balazs,
Walter Ruttmann and others. He made a film with Eisenstein, which has since been
lost. The Congress is still regarded as the first festival dedicated solely to
film. Back then, the still young art of film-making had to struggle for
recognition.
Also that year, the Nazi storm trooper organisation denounced
Richteras a "cultural Bolshevik" for the first time. ln 1930 he travelled to
Moscow to make the film "Meta I". But objections by the Soviet government
prevented its completion. ln 1933, when the Nazis seized power and Richter was
living in Moscow, storm troopers sacked his Berlin flat and made off with his
art collection. Feering for his life, he was soon forced to flee Moscow without
a penny to his name. ln the Netherlands he made advertising films for Philips.
He also worked for a number of chemical companies that were eager to invest in
film as an advertising medium. He sought permanent residency in France and
Switzerland. ln Switzerland, he and Anno Seghers cooperated on a script, and in
1939 Jean Renair arranged for him to create a majorfilm project in Paris. But
the outbreak of war prevented this film as weil.
When the Swiss immigration
police ordered Richter to leave the country, he succeeded in emigrating to the
USA in 1941. Hilla von Rebay, an ortist and, like Richter, a former member of
the farnaus Berlin "November Group", was then an adviser to the New York arts
patron Solomon Guggenheim. With Guggenheim's help, von Rebay managed to
implement the idea of a "Temple of Non-Objectivity" - the Museum of
Non-Objective Painting (1939), which would become the later Guggenheim Museum.
The museum provided Richter with the necessary invitation and a Jewish support
fund for refugees sponsored his long journey. ln 1942 Richter became a teacher
for film - and later director - at the Institute of Film Techniques at the
College of the City of New York. Until 1956 he trained students who were later
counted among the great figures of American independent film, including Stan
Brackhage, Shirley Clarke, Maya Deren and Jonas Mekas.
ln 1940s America,
after a fifteen-year pause, Richter began painting again. ln 1943144 he created
his great scroll paintings and collages about the war: "Stalingrad", "Invasion"
and "Liberation of Paris". After the war he made the episodic film "Dreams That
Money Can Buy", working alongside five of the most famous artists of the
twentieth century: Leger, Ernst, Calder, Ray and Duchamp. ln 1946 he presented
his first great American art exhibition in Peggy Guggenheim' s ArtofThis Century
gallery.
ln the 1950s, Richter returned to Europe for the first time
following his emigration to deliver lectures. Portions of his art collection,
which he had left behind in Germany following his move to Moscow, were returned
to him. Numerous exhibitions led to the rediscovery of Hans Richter's works in
Western Europe as weil. He worked in Connecticut during the summers and spent
his winters in Ascona near his ortist friends. Richter experienced an
extraordinarily prolific creative phase during which- after he set aside his
painting utensils in the lote 1960s - many works appeared using special collage
techniques. ln 1971 he became a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts. By the
time of his death in Switzerland in 1976, his work was shown and appreciated in
many exhibitions in Western Europe. Now, for the firsttime in over thirty years,
Hans Richter can be rediscovered in an exhibition from Los Angeles.
The
following films by Hans Richter will be shown at the exhibition:
Rhythmus 21
(1921); Rhythmus 23 (1923); Die Malerei und die Probleme der Architektur I
Painting and the Problems of Architecture (192711970); Animation Film with parts
Storyboard 1-11 and VII-IX (192711970); Making of Malevich's Die Malerei und die
Probleme der Architektur (1927170); Inflation (1928); Filmstudie I Filmstudy I
Etude filmique (1928); Vormittagsspuk I Ghosts before Breakfast (1928);
Rennsymphonie I Race Symphony (1928); Alles Dreht Sich, Alles Bewegt Sich I
Everything Turns, Everything Revolves (1929); Zweigroschenzauber (1929); Every
Day (1929169); Die neue Wohnung I The new Dwelling I New Living Place (1930);
Hello Everybody (1933); Van Bliksemschicht tot Televisis I Vom Blitz zum
Fernsehbild I From Lightning tot Television (1935136); Hans im Glück I Hans in
Luck (1937138); Wir leben in einerneuen Zeit I We live in a New World (1938);
Die Eroberung des Himmels I Conquest of the Sky (1938); Die Geburt der Farbe I
The Birth of Color (1939); Die Börse I The Stock Exchange (1939); Dreams That
Money Can Buy (1944-1947); 6 Modern Artists Make a Film (1948); 8 X 8. A Chess
Sonata in 8 Movements (1952-1957); Dadascape (1956-61); Chesscetera (Chess:
Passienote Pastime: The Story of Chess over 5,000 years, 1956157).
Excerpts from films by the following artists will also be
shown:
Vertov, lvens, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Duchamp, Strand, Sheeler, Clair,
Eisenstein, Eggeling and Ruttmann. A recent documentary film by David Davidson
about Hans Richter complements the exhibition: "Hans Richter. Everything Turns,
Everything Revolves". The extensive catalogue contains not only numerous
illustrations but also contributions by Timothy Benson, Philipe-Aiain Michaud,
Edward Dimendberg, Yvonne Zimmermann, Doris Bergerand Michael White
