Alfred Ehrhardt's Bauhaus-Era Paintings Exhibited in Berlin

The Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung in Berlin presents '100 years of bauhaus I: Alfred Ehrhardt – Painting, Drawing, Prints', running until April 18, 2019. The exhibition focuses on Ehrhardt's early work as a painter and graphic artist, created during and after his time at the Bauhaus in Dessau (winter 1928–1929), where he studied and assisted. There he absorbed ideas from Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. His only solo exhibition during his lifetime was at the Kunstverein Hamburg in 1931. His Bauhaus affiliation ended in 1933 when the school was dissolved. Ostracized by the Nazis for alleged Bolshevik deviationism, his artistic activity became sporadic. After WWII, he rebuilt his career as a photographer and documentary filmmaker, winning awards for cultural films, and abandoned painting. Ehrhardt's painting style emphasizes the physicality of paint, using palette knives and broad brushes to apply thick color, often in geometric or abstract forms reminiscent of Kandinsky, with occasional simplified animal subjects recalling Klee. His abstraction reflects early Bauhaus tendencies toward a dreamlike, poetic transposition of nature, with a musical rhythm. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, and prints from the foundation's collection.