Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War (The Drawing Center's Drawing Papers, Volume 119)

The oeuvre of Bauhaus artist Alexander "Xanti" Schawinsky (1904-79) encompasses a range of social and political investigations. Schawinsky spent a lifetime relocating-from Switzerland to Germany to Italy to the United States-and in the process developed his central themes, which include the responsibility of the individual and the repercussions of machine warfare. His Bauhaus training is manifested in his work's complex interpretation of the interrelationship between art, craft and design, and his practice traversed avant-garde theater, experimental photography, the Bauhaus jazz band, mechanical music and dance, and graphic design. This publication focuses on Schawinsky's work on paper from the 1940s, particularly the Head Drawings and Faces of War. Schawinsky's 1940s series reveal the existential struggle of an artist informed by Bauhaus idealism coping with the devastation of war.