Bund für freie Bewegung · 1928
Category: anonymous, unknown
Günther-Orff Schule · 1924
In Munich, Maja Lex was first a student member but soon, together with Gunild Keetmann and the founders Dorothee Günther and Carl Orff, belonged to the leading teaching staff of the Günther-Schule, a forward-looking school with a trebly diversified training concept of integrative musical and movement education. War events disrupted this unique constellation of artistic and educational personalities.
Maja Lex developed a new movement and dance education of a timeless pedagogic and artistic value. She liberated herself from the formalized practice/exercise/training and introduced instead the varied movements of rhythmic-dynamic, spatial and formal variation. Structured improvisation, similar to musical improvisation, was established as a definite component of the teaching lesson.
As a solo dancer and choreographer of Tanzgruppe Günther, Maja Lex was a pioneer of the New German Dance (Neuer Deutscher Tanz) in the 1930s. She created a specific dancing style of a ‘thrilling rhythmic intensity’, a definite feeling for form and a high technical dancing discipline. Music and dance became elements of equal value, not least because of the use of rhythm instruments for the dance and for the orchestra of Günther-Schule, where dancers and musicians changed roles. The director of the orchestra was Gunild Keetmann. Maja Lex’s dances belong to the absolute dance. / quoted from Elementarer Tanz
From 1927, Maja Lex performed her own choreographies. As a soloist and choreographer of the Tanzgruppe Günther-München (lead by Dorothee Günther), she made her decisive breakthrough in 1930 with the “Barbarian Suite” in collaboration with the musical director of the group, the composer Gunild Keetman. Numerous guest performances and awards at home and abroad followed until the school was forcibly closed in 1944 and finally destroyed in 1945.
Maja Lex, who had been very ill since the beginning of the 1940s, moved to Rome in 1948 and lived there together with Dorothee Günther in the house of her mutual friend Myriam Blanc. At the beginning of the 1950s Maja Lex resumed her artistic-pedagogical work and taught at the German Sport University Cologne at the invitation of Liselott Diem. From the mid-1950s until 1976, she taught the main training subject “Elementary Dance” as a senior lecturer. The concept of elementary dance was further developed by her and later in collaboration with her successor Graziela Padilla at the German Sports University Cologne. / quoted from queer places
These photographs of various sizes, most circa 7,5 x 11 cm, [inserted in window slits] belongs to a bound in paper album with cord binding. The album included various teaching and dance scenes of the “Günther Schule”, Munich, 1924.
The Günther School was founded on the initiative of Dorothea Günther and Carl Orff. The school quickly became known and subsequently expanded. It existed from 1924-1944, with an extensive teaching program, such as gymnastics, rhythmic dance and physical education, modern artistic dance, singing, anatomy, pedagogy, psychology, drawing and much more. [quoted from : Bassenge Auktion 121]
Ruth Page in Tropic · 1949
Dancer Ruth Page · 1933
Unbekannt Ausdruckstänzerin
Child and cat · Cyanotype 1905
Victorian nude studies ca 1890
Blumenvasen um 1920
Der Blumenstrauß. Die vergängliche Pracht
Fotografie von den Anfängen bis heute
17. Mai bis 29. Juni 2024
anlässlich der düsseldorf photo+ Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media
Mit Nobuyoshi Araki, Max Baur, Boris Becker, Ute Behrend, Viktoria Binschtok, Peter Bömmels, Tim Berresheim, Natalie Czech, Michael Dannenmann, Sam Evans, Jan Paul Evers, Jitka Hanzlová, Axel Hütte, Leiko Ikemura, Benjamin Katz, Annette Kelm, Karin Kneffel, Maximilian Koppernock, August Kotzsch, Heinrich Kühn, Kathrin Linkersdorff, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hartmut Neumann, Roland Schappert, Luzia Simons, Josef Sudek, Michael Wesely, Dr. Wolff+Tritschler und einigen anonymen alten Fotoarbeiten.
Der Blumenstrauß als künstlerische Installation, die der Fotografie vorausgeht, steht im Fokus dieser Gruppenausstellung.
Als klassisches Thema des Stilllebens hat der Blumenstrauß seinen Reiz bis in die Gegenwart nicht verloren. Die arrangierten Fotos von Blumensträußen Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts sind als Vorläufer der inszenierten Fotografie zu verstehen.
Mit diversen fotografischen Positionen wird der Bogen von historischer Fotografie, beispielsweise von Heinrich Kühn, bis hin zu computerbasierter Fotografie von Tim Berresheim gespannt. Anhand dieses Bildsujets wird auch die Veränderung der technischen und inhaltlichen Möglichkeiten von Fotografie aufgezeigt.
Die zeitgenössische „Blumenstraußfotografie“ geht weit über die Natur- oder Dokumentarfotografie hinaus. So haben die Fotokünstler in unterschiedlicher Ausprägung die skulpturale, malerische und konzeptuelle Möglichkeit dieses Stilllebens ausgelotet und hinterfragt.
Seit Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts ist der Blumenstrauß in der Malerei als Stilleben in all seiner arrangierten Pracht gegenwärtig und oft sinnbildlich für die Vergänglichkeit allen Seins dargestellt. Die Fotografie hat die Möglichkeit, den Prozess des Vergänglichen zu begleiten, und oft sind es die bereits verwelkten Blumen, die einen besonderen Reiz in der Wirklichkeitswahrnehmung ausmachen. Nichts zeigt die Wirklichkeit frappierender als die Vergänglichkeit.
quoted from Der Blumenstrauß: Die Vergängliche Pracht ~ Beck & Eggeling
A Bouquet of Flowers. Transient Beauty
Photography from the beginnings to the present day
17th May until 29th June 2024
on the occasion of düsseldorf photo+ Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media
With Nobuyoshi Araki, Max Baur, Boris Becker, Ute Behrend, Viktoria Binschtok, Peter Bömmels, Tim Berresheim, Natalie Czech, Michael Dannenmann, Sam Evans, Jan Paul Evers, Jitka Hanzlová, Axel Hütte, Leiko Ikemura, Benjamin Katz, Annette Kelm, Karin Kneffel, Maximilian Koppernock, August Kotzsch, Heinrich Kühn, Kathrin Linkersdorff, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hartmut Neumann, Roland Schappert, Luzia Simons, Josef Sudek, Michael Wesely, Dr. Wolff+Tritschler and a selection of anonymous historical photographs.
The bouquet of flowers as an artistic installation that precedes photography is the focus of this group exhibition.
As a classic still life subject, the bouquet of flowers has not lost its appeal to the present day. The arranged photographs of bouquets of flowers in the mid-19th century are to be understood as precursors of staged photography.
With various photographic positions, the exhibition ranges from historical photography, for example by Heinrich Kühn, to computer-based photography by Tim Berresheim. This pictorial subject is also used to demonstrate the changes in the technical and content-related possibilities of photography.
Contemporary “bouquet photography” goes far beyond nature or documentary photography. Photographic artists have explored and scrutinized the sculptural, painterly and conceptual possibilities of this still life to varying degrees.
Since the beginning of the 17th century, the bouquet of flowers has been present in painting as a still life in all its arranged splendour, often symbolizing the transience of all existence. Photography has the opportunity to accompany the process of transience, and it is often the flowers that have already withered that create a special charm in the perception of reality. Nothing shows reality more strikingly than transience.
Two dancers in a sand dune
Dressler in lampshade hat · 1909
un regard oblique 