Sale: 415 / Modern Art, June 06. 2014 in Munich Lot 211

 

211
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Geschäftsgebäude Stuttgart, Projektentwurf, Um 1928.
Estimate:
€ 18,000 / $ 19,440
Sold:
€ 17,500 / $ 18,900

(incl. surcharge)
Geschäftsgebäude Stuttgart, Projektentwurf. Um 1928.
Silver gelatine impression of a photo montage.
Verso with inscription. 13 x 20,6 cm (5,1 x 8,1 in), size of sheet.
The photography was made by Curt Rehbein (verso with copyright stamp). [JS].
Other than specified in the catalog, this lot number may also be subject to differential taxation + 7% import turnover tax (savings of 5% in comparison with regular taxation).

PROVENANCE: Collection Howard Dearstyne, who studuied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Bauhaus, active as architect.
Max Protetch Gallery, New York.
Private collection (acquired from previously mentioned in 1990).

EXHIBITION: Max Protetch Gallery, New York, 8 March - 28 April, 1990.

LITERATURE: Philip Johnson, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1947, illu. on p. 61.

For architecture Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the leading representatives of an international modernist style. He was one of the most influential architects and designers of the 20th century. As furniture designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created numerous pieces that would become design icons. He was born Ludwig Mies in Aachen in 1886, as of 1913 he added his mother's maiden name van der Rohe to his name. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe served an apprenticeship as a mason with his father at the Aachen 'Dombauschule' between 1887 and 1900. In 1903/04 he worked as stucco ornament drawer in an Aachen architecture firm. Afterward Ludwig Mies van der Rohe went to Berlin, where he was active in the office of Bruno Paul from 1905 to 1907. Between 1908 and 1911 he worked for Peter Behrens, together with Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Le Corbusier. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe participated in a design project for the German embassy inSt. Petersburg (1911) and opened his own firm in 1912. In 1922 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe joined the artist collective 'Novembergruppe'. His designs for high rise buildings with glass facades called grea tattention in the 1920s. For the 'Werkbund' exhibition "Die Wohnung" in Stuttgart (Weißenhof-Siedlung) Mies van der Rohe took on overall direction in 1926/27.

In order to work out and visualize spatial interdependence, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe often used, just as it is the case with this work, contemporary photographs, into which he drew or collaged his own epochal architectural drafts. Once he had conferred right to use, the studies were photographed again for demonstration and presentation purposes. For this task Mies van der Rohe often worked with the Berlin photographer Curt Rehbein. Rehbein had already shot Mies van der Rohe's legendary design project for a glass high rise on Friedrichstraße in Berlin in the 1920s, as well as a model for a glass skyscraper intended as continuation of the innovative honeycombed steel tube construction. In 1928 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also executed a design project for an office building in steel tube construction for the Stuttgart Hindenburgplatz, renamed Arnulf-Klett-Platz in 1976. This contemporary photograph after a photomontage by the artist is an impressive document thereof. Mies van der Rohe's unrealized design of a strictly geometric glass cube insert like a paralleling bar between Hindenburg building and main station. Despite its eight floors, it is the airiness of the glass facade that makes for the ingenious contrast with the heavy block-like style of the surrounding buildings.

In 1929 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe planned the German Pavilion for the International Exhibition in Barcelona. For the interior he created the famous "Barcelona" furniture. In 1930 the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, was completed. The same year Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took over directorship of the Bauhaus in Dessau, and would be the last to hold this post before it was closed in 1933. Afterward Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was active as free-lance architect in Berlin. In 1938 he emigrated to the U.S.A. where he opened an architecture firm in Chicago. Between 1938 and 1958 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was director of the department of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In the U.S.A. he made his main works in international modernist style, among them the Fox River House (1945-1950), the House Farnsworth (1946-1951) in Plano, Illinois, the Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago (1948-1951) and the Lafayette Towers in Detroit (1955-1963). The Seagram Building in New York (1958) may well be called his masterpiece. One of his last buildings was the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1962).




211
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Geschäftsgebäude Stuttgart, Projektentwurf, Um 1928.
Estimate:
€ 18,000 / $ 19,440
Sold:
€ 17,500 / $ 18,900

(incl. surcharge)