Andor Weininger in the 50s
information
G111 Exhibitions
Art Rental Service
School of Art
University of Manitoba

Link to photographs
of Weininger works


Link to introduction by
curator Oliver A.I. Botar


Link to the catalogue
of Gallery One One One's
Weininger collection
Andor Weininger
Andor Weininger Installation
ABOVE: The Andor Weininger installation at Gallery One One One. These works are in the permanent collection of Gallery One One One, gifts of the Weininger Foundation. Photography credit: Robert Epp.

The exhibition From Bauhaus to Our House In Etobicoke: Andor Weininger in the 50s will be on view in Gallery One One One at the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus beginning Monday 13 September, 2004. (Weekday hours are Noon to 4 PM. Gallery One One One is closed weekends.)

A symposium entitled Bauhaus Teaching Today? will be held on Thursday 30 September from 2:30 to 4:30 PM in room 207 of the Fitzgerald Building on the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus. Following the Symposium, which will include Oliver Botar, Cliff Eyland, Suzanne Grierson, Patrick Harrop, and Celia Rabinovitch, University President Dr. Emoke Szathmáry will officially open the exhibition, at 5 PM. The opening reception will go on until 7 PM.

Three years ago, a press conference was held to announce a major gift of art from the Weininger Foundation of New York to Gallery One One One at the School of Art in the University of Manitoba, of more than 150 works of art valued at over a quarter of a million dollars. Initiated and coordinated by Dr. Oliver Botar, Associate Professor of Art History, this donation is one of the most important of its kind made to a Canadian collecting institution. Now we are pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition From Bauhaus to Our House in Etobicoke: Andor Weininger in the 50s, an exhibition curated by Dr. Botar for Gallery One One One that includes most of the donated works.

Andor Weininger Work


ABOVE: An untitled Andor Weininger work from the Gallery One One One collection; India ink and watercolour on paper, varnished; click here for verso (01.031) 14.5x23.5 cm. Gift of the Weininger Foundation. Photography credit: William Eakin.

The Hungarian-born Weininger was the only major Bauhaus figure to have lived in Canada, more specifically in the lakeside Mimico distric of Etobicoke just west of Toronto at the time. Born in Hungary, in 1899, Weininger studied at the Bauhaus, the famous German design school, during the early 1920s, and stayed on after his graduation to act as a kind of public relations official. He founded the Bauhaus Jazz Band, which became well-loved throughout Germany during the roaring twenties for its brand of up-beat party music. In the meantime, he produced a fascinating body of work, mostly related to the avant-garde stage, attaining his greatest success with the Mechanical Stage-Review, a kind of moving abstract painting, and with his design for a spherical theatre. He cooperated extensively with the Bauhaus professor Oskar Schlemmer on productions for the Bauhaus Theatre, and was active in their recreation during the early 1980s. He and his wife and collaborator Eva Fernbach left Germany for Holland after the National Socialists came to power, where he engaged in the production of Surrealist works, eventually emigrating to Canada with Eva in 1951. In Toronto, he associated himself with the emergent Canadian abstract art scene, particularly with Jock Macdonald and William Ronald of Painters Eleven, producing a remarkably inventive and eclectic body of work, ranging from sketches of Lake Ontario to free, calligraphic abstract works, often employing complex, layered techniques of applying of pigment. Despite the beauty of their surroundings in Etobicoke, and their pleasure in travelling in Ontario’s cottage country, the Weininger’s felt dissatisfied with their reception in Canada and what they saw as the conservatism of Toronto’s cultural scene. They also felt isolated from their Bauhaus friends and colleagues, many of whom were successful architects, artists and teachers living in the United States, while they languished in unemployment. Thus, Andor and Eva (who recently celebrated her 101st birthday), moved to New York City in 1958, where they lived and worked together until Andor’s death in 1986. The current show includes a large part of Andor Weininger’s Canadian oeuvre, exceptional within the Canadian context for its freedom, technical inventiveness and playfulness, characteristics typical of the Bauhaus approach to art and aesthetic education. The show also includes pieces produced in New York based on Weininger’s work at the Bauhaus, as well as sketches of Berlin café scenes of the 1930s, and his fascinating Surrealist period in the Netherlands. The majority of these works have never been exhibited or published previous to this exhibition.

With this show, Gallery One One One joins an elite group of institutions that have organized exhibitions of their gifts from the Weininger Foundation, one that includes the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Harvard University and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Holland, as well as three German museums, the Ulm Museum, the Weimar Museum, and the Archbishop’s Diocese Museum in Cologne. The Gallery One One One exhibition will be the largest of these. This exhibition is particularly relevant to the University of Manitoba and its students, as the Department of Architecture, and later the School of Art of the University, were among the first institutions in Canada to institute Bauhaus approaches to design education. In recognition of this, Gallery Director Cliff Eyland is organizing a Symposium on Bauhaus Teaching Today?, to be held on Thursday, September 30, from 2:30 to 4:30 PM in room 207 of the Fitzgerald Building on the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus. Following the Symposium, University President Dr. Emoke Szathmáry will officially open the exhibition, at 5 PM. The opening reception will go on until 7 PM. The exhibition will be on view weekdays, from Monday, 13 September to Friday 8 October, 2004, from noon to 4 PM.


Gallery One One One, School of Art, Main Floor, FitzGerald Building, University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus, Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 TEL:204 474-9322 FAX:474-7605

For information please contact Robert Epp eppr@ms.umanitoba.ca