Related Products

• 

  Details

  Egide Rombaux (attr.) Belgian Art Nouveau “Nymph and Iris” sculpture c.1900

  EGIDE ROMBAUX  attr. (1865-1942)  Belgium

  Nymph with Iris Blossoms  c.1900

  Finely hand carved ivory in the form of a full figure nymph with an iris blossom and buds, blue agate base with gilt bronze mounts

  For more information see: Art Nouveau and Art Deco Lighting, Alastair Duncan (New York: Simon & Schuster, Publishers, 1978)

  H: 9 1/2″

  Price: 9,750

  Egide Rombaux, born 1865 in Brussels, was the son of the sculptor Félix Rombaux and student of Charles van der Strappen and Joseph Lambeaux.  Rombaux was one of the more eminent of the Belgian School at the turn of the century; he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1891, and subsequently became a professor at the Institut superieur des Beaux-Arts in Anvers.  Sculptor and medalist, he principally did ivory groups (such as his ‘Venusberg’, displayed at the 1897 chryselephantine Tervuren exposition, and his ‘Daughter of Satan’, now at the Musée Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels), portrait busts and statues.  He also collaborated with silversmith Franz Hoosemans on a delightful range of candelabra and tablelamps.

• 

  Details

  Xanti Schawinsky, Optical Structure, Gelatin Silver Print 1943

  XANTI SCHAWINSKY (1904-1979) Switzerland/USA

  Optical Structure   1943

  Silver gelatin print

  Signed: Xanti Schawinsky 1943 (script signature and date in ink on back of photo)

  Photograph: H: 7 7/8” x W: 8”

  Frame: H: 16 9/16” x W: 16 9/16”

  Price: $24,000

  Xanti Schawinsky is usually known either for the activities of his early career, as a young ‘enfant terrible’ of Bauhaus theatre, or for the work he produced at its close as a respected and mature abstract artist. However these two perspectives ignore his tremendous versatility, and the important role he had to play in bringing Modernist ideas to different parts of the inter-war world. Schawinsky was born in Switzerland, the son of a Polish Jew. His creative nature was obvious from an early age, and in his teens he studied art and music in Zurich, before travelling to Berlin and Cologne to learn about design and architecture. In 1924 he enrolled at the Bauhaus, and became involved in the school’s vibrant theatrical scene, also focusing on photography and painting. From the mid 1920s Schawinsky undertook wide range of professional commissions, working as a stage designer, a municipal studio director and a freelance designer. He also returned to the Bauhaus to teach. In 1933 Germany’s growing intolerance forced him to move to Milan, where he spent several years producing commercial graphic design, principally for the typewriter company Olivetti. An invitation to join the progressive Black Mountain College brought him to the USA in 1936. He spent two years at Black Mountain introducing Bauhaus ideas to his American students, before moving to New York to take up freelance design and pursue painting – an activity which absorbed almost all of his attention in his final years. As innovative in commercial art as he was in his unpaid pieces, Schawinsky’s work demonstrated the huge creative power of the inter-war meeting of art and industry.