In his lifetime, "Xanti" (Alexander) Schawinsky (1904-79) was best known for his work in the theater department at the Bauhaus. Fleeing Germany before the beginning of the Second World War, he landed at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where in the 1930s he developed his theory of the "Spectodrama." Involving multimedia productions examining elementary phenomena such as space, motion, light, sound or color from scientific, technical and performance-based perspectives, the Spectodrama represents an early form of the "happening." Beyond the avant-garde utopias of the Bauhaus and his proto-happening art, Schawinsky also worked as a painter and graphic designer.
Protracted legal disputes over the artist's estate meant that Schawinsky's work was until recently almost inaccessible; Xanti Schawinsky is the first survey of Schawinsky's extraordinarily prolific output over the course of five decades, and a long-overdue resource on the work of this key figure.