Tempo! Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt

Marianne Brandt (1893–1983) is celebrated for her iconic metalwork designs for the Bauhaus, including teapots, ashtrays, and bowls. The Busch-Reisinger Museum owns two lamps and a samovar, the latter on view in the permanent collection galleries. Much less well known are her witty and incisive photomontages, created in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, in which she drew on the vast array of visual material made available by the period’s burgeoning illustrated press.

This pioneering exhibition of over 30 works from European and American public and private collections brings together for the first time all but a handful of Brandt’s visually dynamic and intriguing investigations of technology, gender roles, and entertainment culture. Photomontage is increasingly recognized as a quintessentially modern medium, and this exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to discover, enjoy, and evaluate an overlooked body of work by one of Germany’s leading artists during the Weimar Republic.

A catalogue with information on all of the nearly 50 works that make up Brandt’s montage oeuvre accompanies the exhibition.

This traveling exhibition was organized by the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin (with Elizabeth Otto, assistant professor of art history, State University of New York at Buffalo, as guest curator).

This presentation is made possible, in part, by the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.