Product Description
Norman Bel Geddes Art Deco Streamline Medal 25th anniversary of GM 1933
NORMAN BEL GEDDES (1893 – 1958) USA
Medal 1933 (Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors)
Silvered bronze
Signed: Norman Bel Geddes [copyright mark ] 1933
Exhibited: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 16-Jan. 7, 2001, Mint Museum of Craft & Design, North Carolina, May 3-July 28, 2002
Illustrated: Johnson, J. Stewart, American Modern 1925-1940: Design for a New Age, Harry N. Abrams & The American Federation of the Arts, 2000, p. 127
Diameter: 3″
This medallion, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors, is an example of the Streamlined style that dominated architecture and design in America from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. With its abstracted, teardrop-shaped vehicle form depicted in motion, with the tall winglike element rising from its center, the overall effect is one of speed and movement—characteristic of the Streamlined style and appropriate to the automobile and airplane age. Norman Bel Geddes was trained as a theatrical set designer but best known for another project for General Motors, the Futurama exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This exhibit, through which visitors were propelled on a giant conveyor belt, depicted a utopian vision of America in the near future, a world dependent on the speed and efficiency of the automobile for work and recreation.
Norman Bel Geddes Art Deco Streamline Medal 25th anniversary of GM 1933
REINHOLD KLAUS (1881-1963) Vienna, Austria
CARL GEYLING ATELIER (founded 1841) Vienna, Austria
Man with tophat and flowers c. 1930
Window of stained and hand-painted leaded glass
Provenance: Estate of Carl Geyling (1814-1880), Vienna
H: 17 3/4″ x W: 14 1/2″
Reinhold Klaus studied from 1898-1902 with Alfred Roller at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. In 1914 Klaus married into the Carl Geyling family and became extensively involved with with stained glass painting. As early as 1918 Klaus worked on a stained glass window for the Siegestempel am Bisamberg in Vienna. In 1934 he became a professor of stained glass painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule, as well as creative director of the C. Geylings Erben glass painting company. Reinhold Klaus, a member of the Künstlerhaus since 1924 received many prizes and honors. He worked on commissions for the St. Veits cathedral in Prague, the St. Stephan cathedral in Vienna and many others.