Christian Schad

German postage stamp, reproduces Maika from 1929

Christian Schad (August 21, 1894 – February 25, 1982) was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement.

Life

Schad was born in Miesbach, Oberbayern. He studied at the art academy in Munich in 1913. A pacifist, he fled to Switzerland in 1915 to avoid service in World War I, settling first in Zurich and then in Geneva.^[1] Both cities were centers of the Dada movement, and Schad became a Dadaist. He was witness of the foundation of the famous Cabaret Voltaire. In this period he developed a close friendship with the writer and dadaist Walter Serner. Beginning in 1918, Schad created his own version of the Photogram (which later was named "Schadographs" by Tristan Tzara) where a contour picture is developed on light-sensitive platters. From 1920 to 1925, he spent some years in Rome and Naples, where he studied the Italian painters, and married. In 1927 the family emigrated to Vienna. His paintings of this period are closely associated with the New Objectivity Movement. In the late twenties, he returned to Berlin and settled there.

Although many sense^[who?] that he was horrified by the Nazis, his art was not condemned in the way that the work of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and many other artists of the New Objectivity movement was; this may have been because of his lack of commercial success. He became interested in Eastern philosophy around 1930, and his artistic production declined precipitously.^[2]

Schad died in Stuttgart on February 25, 1982.

Work

Appendectomy in Geneva (1929)

Schad's works of 1915–1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism.^[1] During his stay in Italy he developed a smooth, realistic style that recalls the clarity he admired in the paintings of Raphael.^[3] Upon returning to Berlin in 1927 he painted some of the most significant works of the New Objectivity. They are characterized by "an artistic perception so sharp that it seems to cut beneath the skin", according to Wieland Schmied,^[4] who calls Schad the "prototypical possessor of the 'cool gaze' which distinguishes this movement from earlier forms of realism".^[5]

In 1918 Schad began experimenting by making cameraless photographic images inspired by Cubism. Talbot had originally called these images “photogenic drawings” which were prints made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and then exposing the paper to sunlight. By 1919 Schad was creating photogenic drawings from random arrangements of discarded objects he had collected such as torn tickets, receipts and rags.^[6]

Schad's new imagery was constructed by taking discarded unimportant objects and arranging them. The photograms created from these arrangements had taken on a new form and meaning not considered previously. These prints were published in 1920 in the magazine Dadaphone by Tristan Tzara. She referred to these as “Schadographs”. It was Tristan Tzara who called these images Schadographs to express a Dadist desire to create art from discarded objects. Schad's descriptions of his techniques were eventually used by both Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in their more extensive explorations.

See also

• Otto Dix
• George Grosz
• Rudolf Schlichter
• Karl Hubbuch

Notes

References

• Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
• Rosenblum, Naomi (1997). A World History of Photography, 3rd edition. Abbeville Press
• Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0184-7
• Stremmel, Kerstin, & Grosenick, Uta. (2004). Realism. Koln: Taschen. ISBN 3822829420

External links

• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Some of Christian Schad's work
• Discussion of Christian Schad's photograms