Oskar Schlemmer, German painter, choreographer celebrated in a Google Doodle

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 130th birth anniversary of the German-born painter, sculptor and choreographer, Oskar Schlemmer. Among many of his achievements, Google notes his contribution to ballet, showing a bulbous mechanical figure standing in a ballet pose wearing a metallic mask. This, as stated in Google’s  blog post , was to reflect on a particular work of his, called “Triadisches Ballett” or Triadic Ballet, where the performers were transformed into geometrical figurines. [caption id=“attachment_5107651” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Bulbous mechanical creatures wearing metallic masks. Image: Google[/caption] The production premiered in Stuttgart in 1922 and involved three dancers, 12 movements, and 18 costumes to showcase an innovative approach to ballet. This, Google claims, “broke with all convention to explore the relationship between body and space in new and exciting ways.” Even Schlemmer himself described the performance as “artistic metaphysical mathematics,” and a “party in form and colour.” In fact, Schlemmer’s work is known to have greatly inspired artists like David Bowie. Born in 1888, and the youngest of six children, Schlemmer studied art in Stuttgart under landscape painters Christian Landenberger and Friedrich von Keller. After this, he moved to Berlin for a short while in 1910, only to return to Stuttgart soon after to study further. After World War I, Schlemmer worked at Walter Gropius’s avant-garde Bauhaus School in Weimar in the mural-painting and sculpture departments, before moving to the theatre workshop. He then worked in Berlin until 1933 until he was forced to resign over pressure from the Nazi’s. His work was even featured in the Nazi Degenerate Art exhibition in 1937. The final years of his life and most of his later creations were marred by the Nazi regime. Schlemmer eventually died in 1943.