Herbert Bayer (Austrian/American 1900-1985) Untitled [Formulation in Red Green and Periwinkle]

Herbert Bayer (Austrian/American, 1900-1985) Untitled [Formulation in Red, Green, and Periwinkle] Signed and dated "bayer 50" l. l. Oil on canvas, 13 x 39 1/4 in. (33.0 x 99.7 cm), framed. Condition: Surface grime. Provenance: From the collection of Louis Albert McMillen. N.B. Herbert Bayer was a student in the early to mid-1920s under Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Though he was adept at many forms of art, he was encouraged by Gropius to specialize in graphic design. (1) He became an instructor at the Bauhaus in Dessau from the mid- to late-1920s, teaching advertising, page design, and typography. Like Gropius, Bayer immigrated to the United States after the Nazi party's closure of the Bauhaus in Dessau. He worked from the late-1930s to the mid-1940s in New York as a commercial artist and exhibition designer, and participated in one-man and group shows such as at the Museum of Modern Art and Black Mountain College. (2) He moved to Aspen, Colorado in the mid-1940s and remained there for several decades. Although Bayer is best-known for his typographical work, he considered himself foremost a painter and practiced his entire life. (3) The present work is typical of his geometric abstractions that suggest movement through purely formal means. (1) http://www.tclf.org/pioneers/profiles/bayer/index.htm (2) Monica Bohm-Duchen. "Bayer, Herbert." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007027 (accessed Jan Read more…