Piero Della Francesca&Oskar SchlemmerZakriya Chughtai

Piero Della FrancescaPiero Della Francesca was an Italian painter who mainly explored the use of perspective in his paintings, who became well renowned in the 20th century, mainly due to the mathematics and geometrics used in his artworks. He contributed to the Italian renaissance with his large geometrical frescoes. There is not much known about Piero’s training as a painter in his early life, however its thought he was taught by local masters who had been influenced by Sienese art, which was founded in Florence, Italy. In 1439 Piero worked as an assistant of Domenico Veneziano, who at the time was painting frescoes for the hospital of Sta, in Italy. Piero would have been advised to similar well known artists by Domenico Veneziano, whose own work show emphasis on colour and light. The contacts with the early Renaissance artists of Florence provided the foundation of Piero’s own style. In 1442, Piero was elected to the town council. The Misericordia Altarpiece shows Piero’s appreciation to the Florentines Donatello and Masaccio, his affection for geometric form, and the slowness and deliberation with which he habitually worked. Piero Della Francesca’s style is shown in frescoes painted in the choir of the church of S. Francesco at Arezzo. In his old age Piero stopped painting and instead wrote a treatise on painting between 1474 and 1482, which was called ‘On Perspective in Painting’. He included a range of diagrams on geometric, proportional and perspectival problems. His most notable pupils were Signorelli and Perugino, where its easy to see his influence on perspective and proportion.

Influences • In 1439 he was working in

Florence with Domenico Veneziano, whose use of space and proportion influenced him.

• Piero’s teachers were influenced by Sienese art. Therefore his style was based on the techniques used in the style of Sienese.

• Around 1448 Piero worked in the service of Marchese Leonello d’Este in Ferrara, where he may have been influenced by northern Italian art.

QuotesQuote Analysis“Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art.”

This quote shows that his artistic style is based around perspective, and it shows that his approach on each of his artworks is mathematical as well as artistic. The quote also shows that he ranks the use of perspective very highly within his artworks.

“The division of our culture is making us more obtuse than we need be: we can repair communications to some extent: but, as I have said before, we are not going to turn out men and women who understand as much of their world as Piero Della Francesca did of his, or Pascal, or Goethe. With good fortune, however, we can educate a large proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of the imaginative experience, both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities which, once seen, cannot be denied.”

This statement isn’t said by Piero but his name is used in the context where, he is described as one of the best as what he does; and how knowledgeable he is within his area of art.

Two Examples

The painting above has delicate line qualities due to the line weight being very light. The use of shape is very intricate with a large use of repetition of rectangles and squares to make up the overall building, however with the central building being curved, it contrast with its surroundings. Due to the artwork being an architectural painting, the forms need to be in proportion to each other which they are. The colour is important to this painting as it creates a sense of depth as the tone in the sky and the buildings are more dull/flat in the background which is then emphasised by the one point perspective which adds to the overall proportion. When looking at the artwork, you can see the clear horizontal and vertical lines which creates a formal atmosphere.

In this artwork it’s easy to see grid-like nature of the painting which has been thought out by Francesca. The nature of the horizontal and vertical lines again influence the perspective which pushes the left side to the background and enforces the foreground. The figures help create a sense of scale of the buildings and of their surroundings. Colour plays a large role to the painting as the warm vibrancy of the foreground and cold tones in the left side almost creates a layered affect and separated each half of the image. The reason for this is because of the figures on the right being exposed to more natural light due to them being outside. Overall the painting captures a large space and movement, as the buildings and tree behind the figures on the right creates the illusion of the distance between the two. Although the painting is balanced by colours and the form of the architecture and flooring on each side.

Oskar SchlemmerOskar Schlemmer is a German painter, sculptor, choreographer, and designer who is known for ballet/theatre productions and also his paintings. Schlemmer was working with design at a young age, as he worked in a marquetry workshop, and also took classes in the school of applied arts in Stuttgart, where he then carried on to studying in the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Art. After returning back from Berlin, where he researched into artistic trends, he returned to Stuttgart in 1912 to become a student of Adolf Holzel. In 1919, after returning from fighting in WW1, he helped build and modernize the curriculum at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Art. Although a year later he was invited to the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius. He contributed to sculpture(metal works), life drawings, mural paintings and then later becoming a teacher who focused on form. He is most famous for his ‘Triadic Ballet’ which he choreographed and designed the costumes based on cylinder, sphere, cone and spiral shapes. The theatre/dance productions that he was involved in influenced the style of his paintings and the way he painted figures. Schlemmer was commissioned to paint murals across Germany in the 1920s, however many of then were vandalised or destroyed by the Nazi party. He moved on to teach in a state art academy in Breslau, where he did most of his famous paintings, for example ‘Bauhaus Stairway’. Although, the Nazi party again restricted him from teaching which forced him to move to Switzerland. Towards the end of his life, he struggled to exhibit his work due to the Nazi Regime. The Nazi party did display his work once in 1937, where the exhibition was named ‘Degenerate Art’ which was propaganda for the Nazi party.

Influences• Schlemmer served as head of the stage

workshop at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1929. His experience with dance influenced his works, like the ‘Dancer’ and ‘Bauhaus stairway’

• His artworks mainly deals with the idea of a figure in space. Where he mixes formal geometric shape into the form of the figure.

• He is also influenced by Cubism, which taught him to integrate figures into geometric structures.

• His use of choreography, influenced the way he painted his figures, where his ideas were also incorporated with linear geometrics from the key ideas of the Bauhaus.

QuotesQuote Analysis“If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.”

This quote implies that Schlemmer doesn’t strive towards perfection and precision of specific forms and shapes, otherwise he feels it would have a negative impact towards art. Its almost like he feels that the creation of art should be natural.

“Life has become so mechanized, thanks to machines and a technology which our senses cannot possibly ignore, that we are intensely aware of man as a machine and the body as a mechanism. In art, especially in painting we are witnessing a search for the roots and sources of all creativity; this grows out of the bankruptcy brought on by excessive refinement.”

This shows his dislike towards machinery and technology. This links back to the last quote where he believes that too many people want to specifically find creativity, which he fells is being provoked by technology. This shows that in his own approach he uses natural forms which aren’t forced upon him.

“In the face of the economic plight, it is our task to become pioneers of simplicity, that is, to find a simple form for all of life’s necessities, which is at the same time respectable and genuine.”

Schlemmer in this quote shows that his thinking is basic and approach on design is all about simplicity. This thinking is influenced by the basic teachings of the Bauhaus school where Schlemmer taught.

Two ExamplesThe painting to the right works well due to the juxtaposition between the curved human figures and the linear geometrics of the structure of the buildings. However the figures allude to 2D shapes like rectangles, squares and triangles, then the curvature and shade turn them into 3D objects. What also sets the figures and architecture apart is the texture. On the figures the texture is rough yet the staircase is smooth. Schlemmer creates movement in the painting through the flow and rhythm of the figures. This is due to his theatre and choreography background. The use of light on each figure and surface produces a soft atmosphere. There is a good harmony between the colour scheme as he utilises mainly white, black, grey and blue. Although immediately the viewer’s eye is drawn to the orange figure in the centre, this balances the rest of the surrounding artwork.

The sculpture above has a semi-abstract shape which alludes to the human figure. With Schlemmer’s background of teaching form at the Bauhaus and also use of dance, he captures the movement of the figure, with the flowing curved nature of the object. This is emphasised by the use of steel, which reflects light and silver tones around the sculpture which keeps the viewers eye moving around the sculpture. Although in the centre of the model the formal linear geometrics contrast against curves, but the monochrome material keeps the rhythm of the overall aesthetics. The texture is seen to be smooth because of the steel which adds soft accents of white light. Finally space is captured within the artwork, as the layered forms creates different shadows on each façade.