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What techniques did Karl Blossfeldt use?
He taught himself techniques such as lighting the specimens to clearly reveal their three-dimensional form and painting on his glass plate negatives to eliminate distracting shadows. He even modified his bulky studio camera so that it could take detailed images enlarged as much as 30X.
What influenced Karl Blossfeldt work?
An artist, teacher, sculptor and photographer from Germany, Karl Blossfeldt (1865 – 1932), worked in Berlin till the age of 67. He was inspired by nature and hence reflected this muse in his close-up photography of living organisms and plants. For him, plants held an “artistic and architectural” pattern.
Is Karl Blossfeldt associated with any particular art movement?
Karl Blossfeldt was trained in the arts at the Academy of Royal Crafts Museum in Berlin and is one of the main photographers of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a modernist movement in German arts and literature that emerged after the World War I and flourished during the 1920s.
When was Karl Blossfeldt making his artwork?
In 1926, when Blossfeldt was already in his 60s, his work was exhibited to the public for the first time at Berlin’s avant-garde Galerie Nierendorf. The works exhibited there were published in the book Urformen der Kunst (1928; Art Forms in Nature [2003]).
What kind of art did Karl Blossfeldt do?
Karl Blossfeldt was born in 1865, and in 1881 he started developing an enormous body of work which remains innovative to this day. The surrealist movement praised his work, and he is generally associated with the New Objectivity art movement in Germany.
Why was Karl Blossfeldt interested in archetypes?
Since his student years, was also an amateur botanist, and held a strong belief that forms found in art and architecture could be linked back to specific archetypal structures already present in nature.
Where did Gerd Blossfeldt spend most of his childhood?
Blossfeldt spent most of his childhood in Central Germany. He began studying at the Institute of Royal Arts in Berlin after finishing his apprenticeship in iron casting and sculpture at Art Ironworks and Foundry at Magdesprung. During this time, he collected different plants for use in drawing class as models.
When did Karl Blossfeldt publish his first book?
Art forms in nature (Unformen der Kunst), a pictorial book of Blossfeldt’s work, was published by Ernst Wasmuth and edited by Nierendorf in 1928. It was a bestseller of its time and made him famous overnight.