680 - Karl Peter Röhl (1890 – Kiel – 1975)

Karl Peter Röhl (1890 – Kiel – 1975) Untitled Ink on cream-colored vellum. 1925. Approx. 63.5 x 48 cm. Signed and dated lower right. We thank the Karl Peter Röhl Estate for their assistance in cataloging this work. • Röhl was a founding member of the Bauhaus and created the first Bauhaus logo, the “little star man,” in 1919 • In 1922, Theo van Doesburg held his De Stijl course in Röhl’s Weimar studio—one of the most influential catalysts for constructive modernism in Germany • The two works on paper from 1925 and 1926 demonstrate how Röhl further developed the principles of De Stijl into an independent, monumental geometric visual language Karl Peter Röhl was already a trained painter when he enrolled in the newly founded State Bauhaus in Weimar in April 1919. After completing an apprenticeship, he attended the schools of applied arts in Kiel and Berlin and subsequently studied at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar. At the Bauhaus, he was assigned his own studio and attended Johannes Itten’s preparatory course during his first semester. He soon became one of the students who played a decisive role in shaping the image of the young school: as early as 1919, Röhl designed the first Bauhaus logo, the so-called “little star man,” which, as the founding emblem, remains associated to this day with the institution’s expressive early years. The real turning point in his work came when the Dutch painter and theorist Theo van Doesburg arrived in Weimar in 1921 to introduce the ideas of De Stijl to the Bauhaus. Since he was barred from teaching at the school, van Doesburg held his De Stijl course in Röhl’s studio in 1922—a course that became a gathering place for all those seeking a clear, constructive formal language. That same year, Röhl attended the Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar, which brought together artists such as El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Hans Arp, and Kurt Schwitters. He also shared a close friendship with Walter Dexel. The expressive visual worlds of the early Bauhaus years now gave way to strict compositions of horizontals, verticals, and black planes. After his time at the Bauhaus, Röhl continued his studies as a master student under Walther Klemm at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar. In 1926, he took over as director of the preparatory class at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main—a role in which he passed on the lessons of Bauhaus pedagogy until 1942. The two works presented here demonstrate how Röhl independently developed the geometric language during these years. The 1925 drawing combines a circle and a square into a vertical sequence of diminishing forms, in which the black square seems, as it were, to wander through the pictorial space. In the work created in 1926 and designated by Röhl as “Bl. 21,” the forms gain mass: the bars condense into a monumental, almost symbolic structure in which the black form and the light background assert themselves reciprocally. The two works thus trace the path of an artist who was active at the Bauhaus from its very inception, whose studio was the source of one of Modernism’s most influential impulses, and who, in the years that followed, shaped the principles of constructive abstraction into a visual language all his own. Provenance: The artist’s estate; Private collection, Switzerland. Taxation: subject to regular taxation (VAT: Regular Taxation).