8 - Hans Poelzig

Hans Poelzig (Berlin 1869 – 1936 Berlin), Set design "Domgewölbe" for the play "Gilles und Jeanne" by Georg Kaiser, 1924, colored-pencil drawing on tracing paper, inscribed “No. 194” in pencil in the lower right corner, 32.5 x 25.3 cm, mounted on backing board and set under glass with a mat in a white anodized aluminum frame, overall size: 44 x 44 cm. Limit 270,- Provenance: - Artist’s estate - Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg The premiere of the play “Gilles and Jeanne: A Play in Three Acts” by Georg Kaiser (1878–1945) took place on June 2, 1923, at the Altes Theater in Leipzig. It dealt with the historical, deeply complex relationship between the French national heroine Joan of Arc and her comrade-in-arms, the future serial killer Gilles de Rais. For a production in Berlin that never came to fruition, the famous Expressionist architect Hans Poelzig designed both the set pieces and the costumes the following year. Poelzig, who had a great passion for theater and film—he built, among other things, the Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin and designed the sets for the film *Der Golem* (1920) starring Paul Wegener, which became one of the greatest international successes of German silent film—created highly expressionistic designs for this planned production. His sketches depicted monumental architectural elements that often veered into the abstract, such as cathedral vaults, columns of light, and Gothic-style church interiors. The production was intended to mark a radical break with the realistic theater of the 19th century: Instead of historically accurate sets, the stage was dominated by stark contrasts of light and shadow, distorted forms, and symbolic spaces, designed to portray the ruthless, psychopathic nature of Gilles de Rais in contrast to Jeanne’s religious purity. Of Poelzig’s stage designs, it was primarily the projects with Max Reinhardt—such as *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* or *King Lear*—that were realized. All of Hans Poelzig’s stage designs—in which the architect’s distinctive style is unmistakable—impress with their strong sense of space and their expressionistic, almost mystical expressiveness.