1923
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Play with Heads is a 1923 by Oskar Schlemmer, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Three flat heads float on a blank page. Their faces are simple shapes—circles, squares, triangles—like masks or mannequins. Schlemmer made these prints by flicking ink at a stone with a toothbrush. The tiny dots let light through, so the heads look see-through, almost ghostly. He was playing with how few lines you need to suggest a person. Look up the technique called *sfumato* to see how other artists softened edges with tiny dots.
Variations on a theme, this rare set of prints explores diverse arrangements of three heads. Each image uses a single color and was printed in a spatter technique first used in the 19th century by French lithographers like Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. By drawing a blade across a toothbrush saturated with lithographic ink, the ink is spattered onto the lithographic stone in a random pattern of variously sized dots. By controlling the fine spray of droplets, transparent forms and a wide tonal range can be obtained. Unlike his contemporaries, El Lissitzky, Lázló Moholy-Nagy, and Kurt Schwitters,…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Oskar Schlemmer (German pronunciation: ; 4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school.
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