Erich Buchholz, Abstract Composition, 1920-21.

This monumental painting shows Buchholz joining the Expressionist brushstrokes of his teacher, Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), with the Constructivist composition style of El Lissitzky (1890-1941), whom he had recently befriended. The geometric elements, which he thought of as essential shapes,combine with rich brushwork to create a more tonally varied palette than the Constructivists. Buchholz found compasses and straight edges too sterile and drew all of his geometric shapes by hand. This Abstract Composition, also known as The Law is Emerging, is evidence of both Buchholz’s personal investigation of multiple painting styles as well as the broader interest of his post-war generation in new, utopian art theories.

Buchholz was born to a poor family in Bamberg, Germany in 1891. In 1919 he returned to Berlin from the war and made the next fourteen years his most productive. He created drawings, paintings, typefaces, graphics, three-dimensional constructions, and Constructivist environments such as the design for his studio. Buchholz gained the respect of his fellow artists for his bold, recognizable style within Constructivist design principles. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) had intended to hire him to teach at the Bauhaus when the school was forced to close in 1932.

During the Weimar period Buchholz’s social circle included Constructivists, Futurists, Expressionists, and Blaue Reiter artists such as Franz Marc (1880-1916) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Buchholz exhibited with the Hungarian Constructivists and the Finnish November Group at the Sturm gallery in Berlin, where he had his first one-man show in 1921, but chose not to identify himself with any one group, either by name or by complete assimilation of a single style.

In 1933 the National Socialists came to power and Buchholz’s art was labeled entartete, “degenerate,” like that of so many other avant-garde artists. Since he was outside the official state art association, Buchholz was prohibited from exhibiting or even making art. From the lively artistic circles of Berlin, Buchholz exiled himself to the German countryside during the Second World War. There, Buchholz applied his functional, humanist design principles to designs for street kiosks, furniture, telephones, houses, towers, and cargo ships, most of which were never built.

Sources:

“On Exhibition” Studio International vol. 177 February 1969, 101.

Layla Dawson, “The Unknown Constructivist.” Architectural Review, vol. 200 August 1996, 11-12.

Eberhard Roters and Mo Buchholz. Erich Buchholz. Berlin: Ars Nicolai GmbH,
The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, (Oxford University Press, Accessed 15 June 2004) <http://www.groveart.com>

Sarah Stone, Summer Intern, Class of 2004

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