Mudam Luxembourg - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

Invited curator Raphael Gygax

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand–Duc Jean presents the first retrospective dedicated to the pioneering Bauhaus artist Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky (b. 1904, Basel – d. 1979, Locarno) outside his native Switzerland and commissions British artist Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973, London) to create an installation and a performance in response to his work.

‘Schawinsky was a nomadic artist from the very beginning, later forced upon him by the war, and left his mark in many places in Europe and the USA. For many visitors, this will be a discovery of a pre- and post-war modern artist of the twentieth century and his work’s impact on the present.’ – Raphael Gygax, exhibition curator

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand–Duc Jean is delighted to present the first retrospective of Swiss-American artist Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky outside Switzerland. This exhibition features over 100 paintings, photographs, set designs, drawings and graphic design reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of the artist’s work in a vast range of media. A significant portion of these will be on public display for the first time since the artist’s death in 1979. This exhibition contributes to the rediscovery of Schawinsky’s work, which remained inaccessible until recently.

The Basel-born artist was one of the central figures of the Bauhaus, where he studied with Oskar Schlemmer, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee and Lázló Moholy-Nagy and created numerous stage and costume designs, collages and photographs, pioneering the idea of the ‘Spectodrama’, a new form of theatre in which he said he wanted to combine ‘colour and shape, movement and lights, sound and words, pantomime and music, graphic art and improvisation’. With the rise of Hitler in 1933, Schawinsky, who was Jewish, emigrated to Italy, later emigrating to the USA in 1936. There, he taught at Black Mountain College and became one of the most important figures in transatlantic artistic exchange. Formally diverse and guided by constant experimentation, Schawinsky engaged with and influenced many of the key artistic movements of the twentieth century. His radical approach to the performative and a process-based expansion of art continues to influence artists today.

With this exhibition, Mudam Luxembourg aims to increase recognition of a modern artist who took part in two of the most important schools in the history of twentieth-century art – the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College – and who contributed to the dialogue between disciplines that marked art history of the twentieth century and continues to redefine art to this day. Theater, scenography, photography, graphic design, painting, collage and typography are among the fields Schawinsky explored during a career spanning six decades. His pioneering role in the development of performance art still echoes through contemporary artistic practices and is particularly relevant to Mudam’s programme.

Produced in close collaboration with the Estate Xanti Schawinsky, the exhibition includes works in all the disciplines that the artist explored during his lifetime.

Bettina Steinbrügge, Director of Mudam, comments: ‘The work of Schawinsky has influenced a number of trends that are now at the heart of contemporary art, including performance, multimedia and cross-disciplinary art. He can be seen as an important reference for a new generation of artists and for our understanding of the foundations of contemporary art. At Mudam, performance art is at the heart of our programme and this exhibition connects to our ethos by presenting an artist who was part of the avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century and who contributed to shape what performance art is today. By inviting Monster Chetwynd to create an ambitious installation in response to Schawinsky, we also want to highlight the relevance of his work for contemporary artists. This corresponds to Mudam’s mission to approach art history from the perspective of the present.’

Monster Chetwynd’s Xanti Shenanigans

In connection with the retrospective of Xanti Schawinsky, Mudam has commissioned British artist Monster Chetwynd to create a large-scale work for the museum’s Foyer. Her ambitious installation draws inspiration from the idea of ‘mobile theatre’, developed by Schawinsky in the 1920s during his time at the Bauhaus. Xanti Shenanigans will both pay homage to the work of Schawinsky and ‘activate’ it in the present. Although the two artists come from different historical backgrounds, the nature of their work and the playful spirit that drives them embody notions of cross-disciplinarity, experimentation and an open approach to the visual arts. These two presentations propose a unique dialogue between a pioneer of modern stage design and an important contemporary artist working in the field of performance today.

While Xanti Shenanigans is inspired by Schawinsky’s work, Chetwynd approaches
his practice with great freedom, hence the title ‘shenanigans’. She borrows some of Schawinsky’s artistic principles and motifs, such as certain shapes from his costumes and stage sets. Other elements of her installation were produced by driving a car over large strips of fabric, replicating a process used by Schawinsky in the late 1950s and early 1960s for his Track Paintings. Meanwhile, the rail carts that run through the installation, moving costumes around it, was inspired by one of Schawinsky’s earliest works, the painting on paper Entwurf zu einem fahrbaren Theater (Arena) (1925).