PROPERTY OF A GERMAN PRIVATE COLLECTION (LOTS 246 – 248) Dr. Ludwig Grote (1893-1974) was one of Germany’s leading art historians and curators, who throughout the course of the appointments and directorships held over a fifty-year career, was instrumental in guiding a broadening of public understanding of design, art and architecture. From 1924-33 Grote was State Curator of Anhalt, and in 1927 founded the Palais Reina art gallery in Dessau. Crucially, it was in this capacity that together with Walter Gropius Grote oversaw the move of the Bauhaus from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, and again subsequently with Mies van der Rohe for the schools final and brief move to Berlin in 1932. In 1951 Grote was appointed Director of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, where throughout the 1950s he co-ordinated important retrospectives on Oskar Kokoshka, Max Beckmann, and on Der Blaue Reiter and Bauhaus painting.

GUNTA STÖLZL (1897-1983)

A BAUHAUS TEXTILE, CIRCA 1926

Details

GUNTA STÖLZL (1897-1983)
A BAUHAUS TEXTILE, CIRCA 1926
woven fibres, probably silk and linen
approximately 32 ¾ in. (83 cm.) wide, 97 ½ in. (248 cm.) long

Provenance

Gifted by the designer to Dr. Ludwig and Gertrude-Maud Grote, circa 1926;
Thence by descent.

Brought to you by

Jeremy Morrison

jmorrison@christies.com +44 (0)20 7752 3274

Lot Essay

Gunta Stölzl was the leading German textile artist who played a fundamental role in the development of the Bauhaus school’s weaving workshop. As the Bauhaus’s only female master, she oversaw enormous change within the weaving department as it transitioned from individual pictorial works to modern industrial designs. She joined the Bauhaus as a student in 1920, became a junior master in 1927 and a full master the following year, before leaving in 1931. Stölzl and Gertrude-Maud Grote, both of whom bore their first child the same year, 1929, remained close friends until long after the Bauhaus period. It is possible that this unusually long textile may have been used as a Fluegeldecke, draped over the Grote’s grand piano.

Christie’s would like to thank Yael Aloni, Gunta Stölzl’s eldest daughter, for her assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.

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