A fascinating and extremely versatile artist, William Wauer was a member of the German avant-garde in the early 1900s.
Enjoying a significant and varied career, there were few areas of the arts that Wauer had not turned his talents to before he was ultimately branded “degenerate” by the Nazis and banned from practising art in 1933.
Born and educated in Dresden, Wauer launched himself into his artistic training with vigour, enrolling at the Dresden Academy before transferring to Berlin and Munich. A passion for travel developed and he spent the last years of the 1880s traversing the globe; living for periods in San Francisco, New York, Vienna, Rome and Leipzig. His creative undertakings during this period were as multitudinous as his addresses and he worked variously as a publisher, editor, advertiser, illustrator and art critic.
Theatre, film and, of course, sculpture were Wauer’s main focus from the 1900s onwards and remain his predominant legacy. It was in the capacity of theatre director that he first became associated with the art group Der Sturm (The Storm). The movement took its name from the magazine founded by Herwath Walden, the purpose of which was to champion and affiliate radical Modern artists from across Europe. Fellow members included Schlemmer, Chagall, Kandinsky and Klee; artists encompassing diverse experimental movements including Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Futurism.
Wauer’s sculpture is a stylistic product of his immersion in this highly creative melting pot. Characterised by forms at once fluid and angular, his work evokes a sense of movement and rhythm which is arguably more expressive than the work of his Futurist counterparts to whom he can logically be compared.