How Bauhaus sculpture Gerhard Marcks returned to artisanry

In 1921, Gerhard Marcks carved this wooden, gold-plated figure of a naked young man with a serious facial expression and one hand holding his other arm. The lopsided statue is now part of the exhibition, "Paths from the Bauhaus - Gerhard Marcks and His Circle of Friends." The show opens on August 17 at the Neues Museum Weimar, marking the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus - two years early.

Gerhard Marcks was one of the first artists to be appointed to the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919. In his function as a lecturer at the art school founded by Walter Gropius, the sculptor focused on a return to artisanry. This picture by an unknown photographer shows Marcks in his studio at the Bauhaus workshop in nearby Dornburg with his sculpture "Adam" (1925).

An unknown photographer assembled these works made of clay in 1919. Particularly striking is a vessel in the form of a head in the middle of the picture. The creator of all these works was Gerhard Marcks who, from 1920 onwards, headed the Bauhaus pottery workshop in Dornburg. That's where he met Bauhaus artists Otto Lindig, Max Krehan, Marguerite Friedlaender and Franz Rudolf Wildenhain.

A bull embellishes this vessel thought to have been formed by Max Krehan, a student of Marcks. The master himself is thought to have decorated its surface. This ceramic artwork was created in 1922.

Painter, sculptor and stage designer Oskar Schlemmer, who specialized in positioning human figures in a room, was a friend of Marcks'. One of his works is this abstract sculpture made of nickel-plated bronze in 1921.

Like Schlemmer, Marcks' friends Otto Hagel and Marguerite Wildenhain also focused on artisanry. This silver gelatine image from 1945 depicts the movements of hands throwing a piece of pottery. It is one of the so-called "Marguerite Wildenhain Papers," which were created between 1930 and 1982. The Gerhard Marcks Bauhaus exhibition runs through November 5 in the Neues Museum Weimar.