Presentation: Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum, Gaudi and Expressionist Architecture, Feb. 27

PRESS RELEASE:

Saturday, February 27, 2016 – 2:30 – 5:00 pm – Free and Open to the Public
at Pack Memorial Library, Lord Auditorium, 67 Haywood Street, Asheville, NC 28801

Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum, Gaudi, and Expressionist Architecture…
Noted Professor Frederick Amrine of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan presents a highly visual slide lecture on how Rudolf Steiner, in his design and construction of the Goetheanum in Switzerland, realized the high aesthetic and spiritual ideals toward which the Expressionists such Wassily Kandinsky, Antoni Gaudi, Hans Poelzig, Bruno Taut, Max Baer, Eric Mendelsohn, and Hans Scharoun were striving.

Amrine visually shows how Rudolf Steiner’s dynamic Imagination as Expressionist Architect was reflected in the construction of both the first Goetheanum and the second Goetheanum. The present Goetheanum building and its precursor, the first Goetheanum, have been widely cited as masterpieces of modern architecture. Rudolf Steiner’s second Goetheanum has been called “the most important building of the first half of the 20th century.” Art critic Michael Brennan has called the building a “true masterpiece of 20th-century expressionist architecture.” This is all the more remarkable because Rudolf Steiner himself considered his second Goetheanum but a pale shadow of the First Goetheanum which was completed in 1919, but destroyed in 1922 by arson fire.

The present Goetheanum houses a 1000-seat auditorium, now the center of an active artistic community incorporating performances of its in-house theater and eurythmy troupes as well as visiting performers from around the world. The stained glass windows in the present building date from Steiner’s time; the painted ceiling and sculptural columns are contemporary replications or reinterpretations of those in the First Goetheanum. Architects who have visited and praised the second Goetheanum’s architecture include Henry van de Velde, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hans Scharoun and Frank Gehry.

Although the architectural component of Expressionism long seemed to be a peripheral phenomenon, by the end of the 20th century it had become the dominant force within the architectural mainstream. Viewed in this light, Rudolf Steiner is now revealed in this lecture as a significant pioneer within the international field of architecture.