In keeping with its tradition of honouring famous and interesting personalities from around the world, Google on Tuesday dedicated a special ‘doodle‘ honouring critically-acclaimed German sculptor, painter, designer and choreographer Oskar Schlemmer. On the occasion of his 130th birth anniversary, Google shared a three-dimensional GIF which showcases a spherical mechanical figure standing in a ballet pose and sporting a metal mask.
Schlemmer staged his ‘Triadic Ballet,’ a groundbreaking production that premiered in Stuttgart, Germany in 1922. With three dancers, 12 movements, and 18 costumes, Schlemmer’s innovative approach to ballet broke with all convention to explore the relationship between body and space in new and exciting ways.
He described the performance as “‘artistic metaphysical mathematics,” and a “party in form and colour.”
Google said that Schlemmer once described the themes of his work as, “The human figure in space, its moving and stationary functions, sitting, lying, walking, standing or as simple as they are universally valid.”
“Born on this day in 1888, Schlemmer was the youngest of six children who attended art school before travelling to in Weimar, Germany to join Walter Gropius’s avant-garde Bauhaus, where he became director of stage research and production. Schlemmer also experimented with painting, sculpture, but it was his creative theater designs that are most remembered, influencing future artists like David Bowie,” said Google in their official blog.
Interestingly, Tuesday also happens to be the 25th anniversary of the buckyball.
Named after Buckminster Fuller, the buckyball is a strong structure that appears in architecture around the world. Science has also seen its potential in display technology, medicine, and security. The Google Doodle team generated the buckyball using an image of a line and circle, the rest was generated with code.
