Andor Weininger, Eva Fernbach Weininger, Kurt Kranz. Andor Weininger, a German-Hungarian, was at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1925, spending much of his time in the Mural Painting Workshop, headed by Wassily Kandinsky, and in Oscar Schlemmer’s Theatre Workshop. Throughout his career, Weininger produced both figurative and abstract work in parallel, sometimes combining the styles within individual works. In doing this, he was following the path set by Paul Klee, whose whimsical – as well as technically innovative – approach to art making, would remain with Weininger throughout his career. But Klee had never been particularly important to him as an artistic model until after World War II. That he continued to hold Klee’s work in high regard while he lived in Canada after 1951 is indicated by the fact that on his first trip to New York City in December of 1953, Weininger purchased a book on Klee’s drawings for his friend, the Ontario College of Art (Toronto) professor and "Painters 11" member Jock Macdonald. Many of Weininger’s figurative works were responses during his Canadian period to this figurative/abstract impulse instilled in him by his studies at the Bauhaus. Early in 1953, Weininger wrote the following to the Ontario Society of Artists: “I came to Canada 1 ½ years ago, but I am not a newcomer in Art, especially in Abstract Art. Thirty-two years ago I entered the Bauhaus in Germany and was there a pupil of Klee and Kandinsky... I exhibited in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Paris. In Canada I exhibited in the first abstract exhibition... I would be very glad if the Ontario Society of Artists would grant me membership, for I have a great desire for wider associations with Canadian artists.” Eva Fernbach Weininger left the Bauhaus in 1928 for Berlin, where she and her husband Andor Weininger set up an interior design business. In 1926 she approached Director Walter Gropius to join the Furniture Workshop at the Bauhaus, but he suggested the Weaving Workshop to her instead. She informed him that in that case she would not attend the School. Gropius relented and Fernbach, whose father was in the lumber business, was one of the few women to study in the school’s Furniture Workshop. Fernbach was part Jewish and the Weininger’s left Germany for The Netherlands in 1938, before emigrating to Canada in 1951. Many of their closest friends were graduates of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop. Kurt Kranz (1910-1977) was born in Germany and began his studies at the Bauhaus in 1930, with Josef Albers, Paul Klee, Joost Schmidt, Walter Peterhans and Wassily Kandinsky. After graduating just as the Bauhaus closed in 1933, he worked with Herbert Bayer in the Studio Dorland in Berlin. He was appointed professor at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts in 1955, retiring in 1968. In the early 1970s he spent time in North America, including Canada. He sojourned some months at the University of Calgary in 1973, meeting Ron Kostyniuk there, and organizing an exhibition of his own work at the Nickle Art Museum. He also exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Jack Pollock Gallery in Toronto, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston and at the McMaster Museum of Art at in Hamilton. His Canadian presence awaits further research. Left to right: Andor Weininger, untitled (view from the Weininger’s Mimico apartment), ink, crayon and watercolour on paper, n.d. (ca. 1952) (School of Art Gallery Collection); Invitations to the openings of the exhibitions “From Bauhaus to Our House in Etobicoke” (Gallery 111, UM, 2004) and “A Bauhausler in Canada: Andor Weininger in the 50s” (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 2009; Cliff Eyland, ed., CD-ROM of images: “From Bauhaus to Our House in Etobicoke” (Gallery 111, UM, 2004); Bruce Montcombroux, “From Bauhaus to Our House in Etobicoke: Andor Weininger in the 50s,” The Manitoban (3 November 2004); Two installation views of Andor Weininger’s exhibition at the Eglinton Gallery, Toronto, April-May, 1956, silver gelatin prints; Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House, New York: Pocketbooks, 1981; Letter from Andor Weininger to Walter and Ise Gropius, 28 December, 1951, in which he writes “We are writing to you not from Miami but from MIMICO.” (Houghton Library, Harvard University, Weininger Papers, photocopy); galley proofs with Andor Weininger’s corrections of Andor Weininger, “The ‘Fun’ Department of the Bauhaus,” for Mosaic, University of Toronto Press, 1957; Kurt Kranz Aquarelle, Düsseldorf: Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, 1973, open to show reproductions of two works by Kranz from 1973, both entitled Calgary; Exposition Kurt Kranz. Retrospective Bauhaus and Today. Form Sequences and Folding Objects. Two copies: 1. University of Calgary, Foyer Gallery, 1973 and Montreal, Musée d’art Contemporain, Cité du Havre, 1972 (Unless otherwise indicated, items are from a private collection)