SELECTED WRITINGS

FREDERICK J. KIESLER (1890-1965)

In 1926, Frederick Kiesler, called the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century because of his multi-faceted interests, emigrated from Vienna to New York, carrying the vision of combining art and life to the art scene of the New World. He actively took part in several projects and movements as an architect, stage designer, sculptor, painter, decorator and art theoretician. His ideas of a total theater, of an endless architecture and sculpture inspired by organic forms provide rich material for subsequent generations of artists. Even 30 years after his death, his original, shrewd thinking lends the texts freshness and topicality, reflecting the temperament of a man who worked intensely and persistently on the design for modern art which was not supposed to exhaust itself in rationalism and functionalism. Although he was known mostly in artists' circles, Kiesler can be numbered together with Duchamp among the most important innovators of art after 1900. This textbook in English combines for the first time a selection of his writings from every branch of art and a number of journal entries as well as other unpublished texts and poems from his estate.

Frederick J. Kiesler. 1926 emigrated from Vienna to New York. 1933 Professor of stage craft at the Julliard School of Music. 1942 designed Peggy Guggenheim's legendary gallery "Art of This Century". 1947 designed the "International Surrealist Exhibition" for André Breton and Marcel Duchamp at the Galerie Maeght, Paris.

Edited by Siegfried Gohr, Gunda Luyken