It is remarkable how the modern art scene in Dresden differed from that of Prague during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the geographical proximity of the two cities. Whereas Prague was clearly influenced by the Surrealist aesthetics of the circle around Breton in Paris, and many Czech artists even spent long periods working in the French capital, Dresden's artistic life was characterised by late echoes of the Expressionist aesthetics of the Brücke and the Secession Group 1919. In Dresden, where a matter-of-fact, objective mode of artistic expression prevailed, there was little to be seen of the abstract-constructivist experimentation being conducted by the Bauhaus movement in Weimar/Dessau, which was so influential elsewhere. Even in Prague, however, Kupka's radical geometric compositions were also largely unknown.
Yet there were some (rare) exceptions. The best known was the circle around Dresden's most famous art patron Ida Bienert, whose salons became a popular meeting place for the artistic avant-garde; the famous Bauhaus protagonists, Walther Gropius and Paul Klee, were among her regular guests. It is therefore not surprising that the Dresden art patron was also involved in the Dutch De Stijl movement. In 1926 she commissioned its leading figure, Piet Mondrian (real name: Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan), to design a “ladies' salon” for the family villa at Würzburger Strasse 46 in Dresden-Plauen, although the project was never actually realised. At that time, Mondrian, like Kupka, had already been living in Paris for many years. And just as Kupka’s work went unnoticed in Czechoslovakia, Mondrian's radical geometrical experiments with rectangular grids left no visible traces in Dresden.
This exhibition thus enables an extraordinary encounter between two pioneers of modern art whose abstract design vocabulary developed in Paris in an atmosphere of mutual respect; quite probably, the two artists were also in personal contact. Undoubtedly, they would have followed each other’s work very closely, and it cannot be ruled out that Kupka's penchant for a strictly rectangular compositional scheme without diagonals, which came to the fore in the 1930s, was the fruit of creative dialogue with Mondrian.
DESIGN COMMISSIONED BY IDA BIENERT
FOR A LADIES’ SALON IN THE FAMILY VILLA
AT WÜRZBURGER STRASSE 46 IN DRESDEN, 1926
PIET MONDRIAN
b. 1872 in Amersfoort, Netherlands
d. 1944 in New York City