Chronology
1890 | Frederick Kiesler was born on September 22 in Cernowitz. |
1908-13 | University of Vienna |
1923 | Stage Design for W.U.R. (R.U.R.), Berlin Kiesler's "electro-mechanical" stage impresses the gathering of internationally acclaimed avant-garde artists in Berlin. After one of the first few performances he makes the acquaintance of Hans Richter, Theo van Doesburg, Lazló Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky – the introduction to these artists will have a decisive impact on his artistic genesis. The first attempt to design electro-mechanical scenery. The fixed scenery has become alive, an active part in the play. De la nature morte vivante. The means to fill the stage with life are: movement of lines, sharp contrasts of colours, the transformation of surfaces towards relief and curved human forms (actors). There is the interplay of moving lights of various colours on the scenery, in rhythm according to speech intonation and the movement of the actors ... Excerpt of: Frederick Kiesler, Als ich das Raumtheater erfand, ca. 1924 |
1924 | Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik, Vienna Kiesler organises the International Exhibition of New Theatre Techniques as part of the Music and Theatre Festival of the City of Vienna. For this exhibition, Kiesler collects approximately hundreds of concepts for theatre as well as drafts for set design and costume design, posters and models by the avant-garde from Russia, Italy, Germany, France, Austria. For the exhibition design he creates the L+T System a flexible and independent form of presenting objects and paintings. Kiesler creates the poster, the catalogue, the admission ticket and the stationary for the exhibition, which follow, in their typographical design, a uniform constructivist concept. For this exhibition Kiesler designs the Space Stage and comments on it in the catalogue: The Space Stage of the Railway-Theatre, the contemporary form of theatre, is floating in space. The ground floor is only the support for the open construction. The audience is circulating in electro-magnetic movements around the core of the stage. Excerpt of: Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik, Exhibition Catalogue, Vienna 1924 |
1925 | Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris Due to the great success of the exhibition in Vienna in 1924, Josef Hoffmann, the commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion, charges Kiesler with the design of the Austrian section at the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” in Paris. Kiesler creates a monumental and spatial structure, the City in Space. The Austrian division incorporates models of set design, plans for theatres, drafts for scenes and costumes by Austrian architects and artists. Through this exhibition design, Kiesler presents his visionary ideas on a mega-city. The country city: the division of city and country will be abolished The time city: time is the measure of organisation of its space The space city: it floats freely in space in a de-centralised federation dictated by the ground formation The automatic city: the processes of daily life are mechanised. […] we want: 1. Transformation of the surrounding area of space into cities. 2. Liberation from the ground, abolition of the static axis. 3. No walls, no foundations. 4. A system of spans (tension) in free space. 5. Creation of new kinds of living, and, through them, the demands which will remould society. From: Frederick Kiesler, Vitalbau-Raumstadt-Funktionelle Architektur, typescript. |
1926 | International Theatre Exposition, New York Still in Paris, Jane Heap invites Kiesler to present European avant-garde set designs to the American public in the European section at the International Theatre Exposition. Beside the radical constructivist ideas, futurism, and Bauhaus, Kiesler shows some of his own works such as the egg-shaped Endless Theatre as a further step in development of the Stage Space. The whole structure is encased in double shells of steel and opaque welded glass. The stage […] an endless spiral. The various levels are connected with elevators and platforms. Seating, platforms, stage and elevator platforms are suspended and spanned above each other. The structure is an elastic building system of cables and platforms developed from bridge building. The drama can expand and develop freely in space mounted on the spiral. Excerpt of: Frederick Kiesler, "Projekt für ein Raumtheater für 100.000 Besucher", in: Architectural Record, May 1930. |
1928 | Saks, Fifth Avenue, New York In 1927, Kiesler takes on the window decorations for the New York department store Saks on Fifth Avenue. He publishes his experiences in 1930 with the book Contemporary Art Applied To The Store And Its Display. Therein Kiesler mentions numerous examples of European and American architecture and window displays, as well as several of his architectural sketches and furniture designs. In the accompanying text, he analyses various art works of his time in order to develop aesthetic laws for the ideal window display. Kiesler regards pictorial art as a font of inspiration for applied art, which he considers the bridge between art and daily life. |
1929 | Film Guild Cinema, New York On February 1, 1929, following nine months of construction time, with a resounding echo in the media, the Film Guild Cinema, the first "100% cinema" is opened. In the cinema which I have designed for the Film Arts Guild is this most important quality of the auditorium its power to suggest concentrated attention and at the same time to destroy the sensation of confinement that may occur easily when the spectator concentrates on the screen. The spectator must be able to lose himself in an imaginary, endless space even though the screen implies the opposite. Excerpt of: Frederick Kiesler, Contemporary Art Applied To The Store And Its Display, New York 1930 |
1930 | Furniture exhibition of the A.U.D.A.C., New York For the 1930 A.U.D.A.C. (American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen) exhibition at the Grand Central Palace, Kiesler designs cubicles, which the invited A.U.D.A.C. members decorate. He himself displays not only his office furniture, such as the Flying Desk, but also photos and sketches for further design and architecture projects. |
1931 | Double Theatre for Woodstock
In 1931 Kiesler participates in a competition for a theatre in Woodstock. With his draft of a double flexible Theatre for Woodstock he wins this competition, in which Frank Lloyd Wright also takes part. The project, however, is never built. The obsolete formula of a monolithic construction, suddenly solidified and permanently and fictitiously thrust upon the scene, is out of the question. The changing demands of stage production and the need for proper correlation between actors and audience made necessary a flexible ephemeral construction and a building technique best achieved through tensional structures, light-weight easily fabricated tubular supports of metal, and web coverings of weatherproofed fabrics. Excerpt of: Frederick Kiesler, "A multi-purpose Community Center designed for Woodstock", in: The Architectural Forum, New York, December 1932. |
1933 | Space House Kiesler builds the Space House for the Modernage Furniture Company in New York. The real-scale model of a one-family home serves as display for the furniture. It represents Kiesler's decisive step away from the right-angled form to the biomorphic language of forms. In the theoretical discourse which accompanies the installation, Kiesler propagates the end of the post and lintel as traditional architectural motif of carrying and supporting. He replaces it with the self-supporting shell-form, laying the foundation for the 1950's Endless House: |
1934 | Stage Design since 1934 From 1934 to 1956 Kiesler teaches at the Juilliard School of Music. In addition, he applies his innovative and revolutionary ideas to stage design: in Erskine's Helen Retires, 1934, he utilizes biomorphic forms for the first time. In Seymour's In the Pasha's Garden, 1935, he uses projections. Sartre's No Exit in 1946 and Milhaud's Le Pauvre Matelot in 1948 show surrealist influences. His intense preoccupation with the theatre is mirrored in his art work and installation design. |
1935-47 | Furniture and Industrial Design During the 30s, Kiesler designs furniture with modernistic forms and functions. He realises the Nesting Tables, which introduce organic shape to his design, inventing the kidney-shaped tables which would become popular in the 1950s. The Bed-Couch for Marguerita and Charles Mergentime and the Party Lounge demonstrate Kiesler's demands on modern furniture. He applies for a patent on Party Lounge
& Furniture Construction as well as on the Lamp and Table Construction. |
1937-41 | Laboratory for Design Correlation, Columbia University, New York Vision Machine Kiesler's Vision Machine is the result of intense studies on the viewers' processes of perception and powers of imagination, research he undertook since his 1937 Laboratory for Design Correlation. Kiesler plans Vision Machine as an audio-visual object to demonstrate and explain the process of perception. In a report to the Dean of Architecture in 1939, he writes: |
Mobile Home Library In collaboration with his students, Kiesler builds the Mobile Home Library, the first matured product of the Institute. This flexible storage system for books is the result of an exemplary functions analysis, perfectly demonstrating the "correalistic design process". |
1942 | Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, New York Peggy Guggenheim commissions Kiesler to design a gallery for her art collection, with an emphasis on "developing new methods for exhibiting paintings, drawings, sculptures and objects". He creates revolutionary presentation systems and multi-functional furniture for four exhibit spaces. In the surrealist gallery, Kiesler allows unframed pictures to "float" in the room, in the abstract gallery he presents geometric works of art in a system of tensions, and in the kinetic gallery he constructs viewing apparatus for the works of Marcel Duchamp and Paul Klee. A new system of co-ordinating architecture with painting and sculpture and their co-ordination with the spectator has been attempted. This new correlation system is a method of 'Spatial Exhibition' […] His Spatial-Exhibition method consists in not using walls for hanging pictures or for placing pedestals for sculptures, but of a free arrangement of these objects throughout the space available, using, from a technical point of view, various methods of cantilever and suspension construction. One of the main features of such Spatial-Exhibitions is the necessity of eliminating all frames. The result achieved – contrary to one's expectation – seems to be a much better possibility for concentrating the attention of the spectator on each painting and therefore a better chance for the painting to communicate its message. Excerpt from: Frederick Kiesler, Notes on Designing the Gallery, typescript 1942. Kiesler writes about the functional possibilities of the multifunctional Correalist Furniture he designed for the exhibition: Here we have the concrete example of the effectiveness of Correalism. This is the name I've given my design theory. The functional core was so forcefully compacted that its main function created other functions, immediately practical and unforeseeable. These 18 possibilities were not the result of a technical occasion; they were inherent in the first structure, in the original cell of the project, just as extremely specialised organs are already present in the human embryo. Excerpt from: Frederick Kiesler, "Rest-Form", in: Transparent, 1984.. |
1944 | Exhibition by the Architects' Committee of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, Inc., Moscow Kiesler designs an Exhibition of American Architecture and City-Planning in Moscow (Architects' Committee of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship) for the Association of American Architects. In a series of primary studies, he conceptualises fantastic presentation elements. These drawings visualize the process of formalizing an exhibition design system stemming from the representation of human and animal body parts. The 1945 Moscow exhibition utilises a simple standing wall-system constructed from wood boards. |
1947 | Bloodflames 1947, Hugo Gallery, New York In 1947, Kiesler conceives the exhibition Bloodflames at the Hugo Gallery in New York, in which artists such as David Hare, Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta and Isamo Noguchi participate. Kiesler changes the small galleries' cubist forms into an "endless" space through use of colour. Continually flowing, colourfully executed divisions of space remove the difference between floors, ceiling and walls. Thereby this idea, originating in the 1933 concept for the Space House, found a radical – if only provisory model-realisation. The Hugo Gallery's colourful total room, with its free-standing artwork, already indicates important factors of the Endless House concept of interior design. Color-Forms are the easiest, cheapest, quickest way of transforming a space in accordance with a vision. If you have no money, you have to get drunk on a pot of paint! That is what the farmer in the country has always done and still does. He paints the white limestone walls inside and out with colour, scribbles a frieze and sometimes paints a Madonna on the front gable: that's the farmer with his horsy instinct! Excerpt from: Frederick Kiesler, Economy and Exhuberance, german typescript (translated by the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation) 1947 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Galerie Maeght, Paris Following a content concept by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, Kiesler conceptualises a surrealist exhibition at the Paris Gallery Maeght. In this context he designs the Salle des Superstitions (Hall of Superstitions) as a cave-like entire artwork, which he refers to as "magic architecture". Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, David Hare and Max Ernst execute artwork under Kiesler's supervision which are integrated in the exhibition space. Kiesler himself creates two sculptures, the Totem of all Religions and the Anti-Taboo-Figure, his first sculptural works. J'oppose au mysticisme de l'hygiène, qui est la superstition de "L'Architecture fonctionelle", les réalités d'une architecture magique qui prend recine dans la totalité de l'être humain, et non dans des parties bénies ou maudites de cet être. […] La réalité nouvelle des arts plastiques se manifest comme une corrélation de données non seulement basées sur les perceptions des cinq sens, mais répondant aussi aux besoins de la psyché. Le "fonctionalisme modern" en architecture est mort. Tant que la "fonction" fut une survivance, sans examen même du royaume du corps sur quoi elle reposait, elle échoua et s'équisa dans la mystique hygiéne + esthéticisme. Excerpt from: Frederick Kiesler, "L'Architecture magique de la Salle de Superstition", in: André Breton, Marcel Duchamp (eds.), Surrealisme en 1947, Paris 1947. |
1950 | Endless House, Kootz Gallery, New York In 1950, the Kootz Gallery organises the exhibition The Muralist and the Modern Architect as a forum for cooperation between architects and artists. Sculptor David Hare invites Kiesler to participate, and so the first three-dimensional model of an Endless House is designed. The concept is based on the Endless Theatre of 1926. In 1950, Kiesler formulates his concept Endless House, through models, drawings and plans, as well as numerous published and unpublished texts, with particular emphasis on interior decoration and its functions, as well as lighting. The Endless House is more economical to light than a conventional building because its volume is not boxed into rooms. Uninterrupted, overflowing, reflected on curving surfaces, the light multiplies itself, and even the minimal amount switched on only to enable us to see gives us physical information over a wide area. From: Frederick Kiesler, "Frederick Kiesler's Endless House and Its Psychological Lighting", in: Interiors, November 1950. |
around 1950 | Galaxies
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1957 | World House Gallery, New York |
1959 | Endless House 1959, Museum of Modern Art, New York |
1961 | Universal Theatre |
1962 | Sculptures, around 1962 |
1964 | Grotto for Meditation |
1965 | Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem |
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F. Kiesler, Stage Design for Karel Capek's play W.U.R. (R.U.R), Berlin 1923
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F. Kiesler, Space Stage, Vienna 1924
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F. Kiesler, City in Space,
Paris 1925
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F. Kiesler, City in Space,
Paris 1925
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F. Kiesler, Display window for Saks Fifth Avenue, New York 1928
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F. Kiesler, Film Guild Cinema,
New York 1929
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F. Kiesler, Film Guild Cinema,
New York 1929
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F. Kiesler, Universal Theatre for Woodstock, 1928
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F. Kiesler, Space House,
New York 1933
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F. Kiesler, Space House,
New York 1933
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F. Kiesler, Nesting Coffee Tables, 1935
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F. Kiesler, Vision Machine,
1937 - 41
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F. Kiesler, Mobile Home Library, 1939
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F. Kiesler works on his Metabolism Chart, 1947
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F. Kiesler, Art of This Century Gallery, New York 1942
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F. Kiesler, Art of This Century Gallery, New York 1942
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F. Kiesler, Art of This Century Gallery, New York 1942
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F. Kiesler, Exhibition “Bloodflames 1947”, Hugo Gallery, New York 1947
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F. Kiesler, “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme”, Galérie Maeght, Paris 1947
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F. Kiesler, “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme”, Galérie Maeght, Paris 1947
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F. Kiesler, Endless House, 1950
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F. Kiesler, Endless House Galaxy, 1950s
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F. Kiesler, A. Bartos, World House Gallery, New York 1957
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F. Kiesler, Endless House, 1959-61
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F. Kiesler, Universal Theater, 1961-62
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F. Kiesler works on Bucephalus, 1964
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F. Kiesler, Us-You-Me, 1965
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F. Kiesler, Grotto for Meditation, 1963-64
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F. Kiesler and A. Bartos, The Shrine of The Book, Jerusalem 1957-65