Modern Visionaries : Paul Scheerbart, Bruno Taut, Paul Goesch

This new book features architectural fantasies, drawings, and writings by three German visionaries of early modernism from the period of artistic departure following the Great War. Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915), writer, poet, and inventor, ignited the enthusiasm of the architect Bruno Taut (1880-1938) for his ideas of building with coloured glass. At the same time, Paul Goesch (1885-1940), trained architect and avant-garde artist, created an abundance of fantastic drawings. Goesch was also a member of "The Glass Chain" (Die glaserne Kette), a forum for utopian architecture founded by Taut in 1919. In the dire economic circumstances of Germany's early Weimar Republic, the expressive art of the time would find inspiration in an array of architectural visions resembling glass grottoes or galactic daydreams. As the architect and co-founder of the Bauhaus movement Walter Gropius put it: "Dreamers, romancers, visionaries [...], this is what we eventually aim for: Utopia! " Modern Visionaries offers the first-ever comparative study of these three utopists' work. It presents some eighty previously unpublished watercolours by Paul Goesch alongside texts and drawings by Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut as well as by other members of "The Glass Chain." The complementing essays by expert contributors explore their historical and artistic context.