Legendry; Interview with Elsa Beckmann on Her Early Life, Part 1 of 2

Player. Good afternoon. This is Frank Anthony. Welcome once again to legendary. Today we feature my recent interview with Elsa Backman whose former husband was Han a spec man. Artist who trained at the legendary Bauhaus in Germany of the early 30s. Currently Mr. Blackman's stage designs are on exhibition and the barrel's gallery of darkness. Hopkins Center. It will. The decisive forces in nature are invisible the invisible can only

be expressed and communicated by abstract symbols. Abstract painting seems to mean the non-verbal language of our time. My work is referred to as abstract hard edge and lately optical painting. The term hard edge is too easily associated with cold and hard. I try to counteract hard edges by using soft colors the precise configurations with controlled soft colors create the necessary tension to fulfil the magic function which painting in my opinion should have namely the successful transformation of a physical surface into a de materialized surface. The form in my paintings has to reveal and support the colors. To use an analogy the form is related to color like a bottle is related to its content. For instance wine. It is the wine

we consume. I set myself strict limitations as to the purity of the artist is means it is my conviction that paintings mainly based on play happy accidents that is never grow. Children play without rules. Adults play games according to rules. Robert Frost puts it. Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. I'm guided in my work by a spontaneous geometry of vision and a controlled palette based on the reaction of our nervous system to color sensation color sensation for the sake of color. That is the content of my painting. I follow the common experience that the simpler the configuration the stronger the impact of color. My aim is the exploration of objective factors of perception resulting in

visual statements of an ending fascination where a form performs and colors sing. Good afternoon also Backman and welcome to legendary. Well thank you very much Public Radio. And before we get into our speaking about your husband and his excellent work could we talk just a little bit about your background to give us an idea of what it was like before you actually met him. Well I was born in Norway and our whole most about 20 miles outside of hostel and I was born in both coal Christiania but also was the city I was brought up in. I we my parents are very interested in music. My father was a doctor and he played the violin extremely well. My mother was a fair pianist and we had music all the time. And we had

to sit down and listen to it. And through that we learned a great deal about classical music mostly. But we had to be quiet and we had to sit and listen and if we didn't well go to play room. If you'd rather. So I look upon this more or less as a musical beginning of an education and love of music. Were you playing anything during your you know I was not playing anything. I happened to have what they call music memory. So anybody would sing a song or play a piece of music. I was immediately able to repeat it that they age of seven the right round there. So I thought myself of course a genius because none of the other girls could do this. Everybody wanted me to study people who are of my parents and I refused

because I found that I knew more than they did because they couldn't sing. According to musical memory today musical memory is very often discovered among people that that time it well it wasn't considered and what was the school system like was or any kind of a free public school system over there. Oh yes there was. Absolutely but the we went to to the private punch old school you know where my father had was the doctor at the school and that's the where we were brought up more or less. And my brother of course went to school and also was like train every day. One of the term loose child mean over there. Well it was that an illegitimate child was not accepted.

In the sense that well she was alone. She was a loner in school and for one year I was in the public school because I hadn't been well. So I naturally we were told about these things anyway it was accepted without then the long lecture of why this child was a what they call the lose child. I wondered about that. Yeah. And the point was that we ignore this girl and you try to be a playmate to this but she was not accepted. And this was part of my mother this fight for the so-called underdog like you call it in this country. And I can remember one time when I came home and told all with fun that we had head on the bridge ignoring this lovely girl who wouldn't play with her Miss. And I got the terrific talk them on that. And from then on she was accepted in no party of children in in our home was without this

girl. So my mother took that as one of her cases. So your mother was interested in a very socially conscious person my mother was very much interested in politics in the sense that she tried to help what we call in this country an underdog people who were hard up good get positions all people going begging on the street and things of that sort. So she was instrumental in getting an old people's home built like my father was instrumental in getting in a sanitarium for TB which was like cancer is today. I mean that was the thought difficulty that illness. One of the things so I will say in this you know never I just accept that I never thought about it. So it was part of the way of life of our time where I was wrong my family yes. And my mother was the elected to the parliament and so therefore

I don't know how long would that be like a representative an hour ago. Yes she was she became a very young person she became a very active social democrat much else. Except in some circles but not in every circle you rode those years what about what time that was. Just being about 19 I think it was early like in nineteen five and I think you thought it was something that wasn't was the usual thing for women to be that active we know my brother was a very unusual and she took a very active thing and people would go up to her to my father and say why do you permit my failed to go through this. She shouldn't you know she's a wife and she's a woman she has children that was the attitude. And my father said I don't know I'm a doctor so that my mother was very active in that when she was selected in the community activities political activists and their main aim was

to help people who were in need. And then I think you mentioned at one point that your early artistic life was involved with music and also dancing because you wanted to be a dancer. Yeah that was a dream thing. When I saw once the ballet when I was about six or seven years old Christmas Sleeping Beauty from then on you couldn't stop me but I never had lessons. I did folk dancing ballroom dancing. We had formal dances opening with a polonaise and I soon as Paul they said so we could dance walls and things. So it was a very active life and it was very formal in some ways and very pretty in other ways like my mother had lived in United States. Her brother was an engineer and was in Boston and she was waiting to get married and my father would be ready with his medical things. And so as a small child he had an awful lot about Indians in America.

So we picked up the chicken feathers and I think we danced in the woods. Could we talk no about also about how you became involved and became acquainted with the Bauhaus after having had my school in San Francisco as to music and motion. I came to New York and through some people I knew I was introduced to the musical nonobjective painting which I'd never heard of or anything. And a friend from California that the WHO HAD being connected with a theater person enough playhouse. And it was a very accepted painting in the field of not objective work which of course is very strange to me. Help me since I have to get up downs and soul

music and soul to come and look and I went into that museum time and time again because the first time I came there I saw this huge painting and I looked at the name and here his name was at all scarlet was very prominent in the museum nonobjective work. And so I had known them in California and so I found out they lived here in New York or at the great nick. So he introduced me to Hillary they said why don't you try to get a job here you would be interested. And so not nothing about it except what I had heard him talk way back you know all this. And I knew nothing about it and so I had engine appointment with the mystery Bay and she gave lectures and she had monthly meetings all the artists in New York and be criticized by her bringing their work and this particular evening I had the appointment to see her.

So I waited then and she didn't show up at all this artist had taken there were coal and I didn't see it as I thought maybe she had gone too. So I went down to get my coat. She came up the stairs and she asked me my boss and I told her but Scarlett had made it like that there. She looked at me and she said do you think you could write about these paintings and I said No I don't like a good idea about these things. And then some little conversation and then she stopped for a while and just said be here Sunday at one o'clock. So I got in that play do a match and while I generally you had come from Norway to America for much of my beginning you mean you know. Well I had six months off from school and I had to go back to study music because up there in Norway you know in Norway and back to down to Munich and study. And I had this

months and there was a girl from California. Her uncle say the shipowner and my father knew them and they said well she wants to go back and else ice free. Why doesn't she go with her because my uncle live in cull in the south let's go. And she didn't he didn't want her to go on the ship with only Manzi Wilson thank you. So they decided that I could go. I mean just you two girls on the ship or else man. Well it was just the tango oil pack that this man oh man this is this ship all that. So we went there I went there and they had landed in Galveston Texas. That was my first image so United States didn't seem very strange to you at that time boy it was fantastic. MY about the experience being the United States and not speaking English and not seeing the Statue of Liberty. Oh I saw that later. A few times.

All of them did. Did you come to first learn about the boat house. I had read about the Bauhaus and I heard about it some time when I was at school studying music and mention. But it had no meaning to me except the one you brought up on a rather conventional sculptures and things like that. This seemed very wild and Monk was then top man when I began to see art in a different way and my family knew him and he had given to my parents the little wood piece. One of his teachings and that was always in my father's office and I couldn't understand why my father liked it so much so. But the boss came in too became a name while I was in California. There are many people there talk about the boss. I didn't know what it was.

And then when I came to New York I got into the museum of nonobjective painting which it was them called. Now it's the Guggenheim Museum. I met many artists who was there talking about the Bauhaus. So I read some about it and tried to find out what it was and then convince give us shown there and all the beholden I was having an exhibition while I pressed. When I first came there and I heard a tremendous amount of talk about this particular fund I started talking nonobjective to people and I got the facial expression from people. Big question mark. So many people who knew the name but didn't know what it was. Nobody nonobjective anything you mean that there would be painting but of no particular object as such no object no object. It was based on. Well come back to the dance because I had no

understanding of what I was looking at when I first started there and then I began to coordinate it with specifically and with Kandinsky because of his big slow motions you see and he had the no names objective names on anything it was nonobjective names you could think about it what you wished. And this pleased me because I had done that very much in that sense. You know I didn't have to say and I look like a twat for sure that you use the top of your head as something nothing like. So I coordinated within myself. To understand what I was looking at. And I began to like it and I began to understand it and I began to talk about it took me some time you know. And they're like I have way back you know and convinced I was trying to show his work in many exhibitions in Europe be a comment about that

was. Oh yeah. You know the Hawkman thought you know even in clothes that's what these paintings look like. So it was took a time before I could understand it. But then I became very devoted to understand then work with it and form and color and wasn't Mrs. rebury the one who was sending care packages. Yes she certainly was she said had said Thomas told me of course this is a time of Hitler wasn't there. Well that was that's I was close right then. That's right three years something like thirty three was the end of that was the beginning of Hitler and how this is work of course was done during those years from 1920 8 until his graduation in Portland. Thirty two. And that was about. Yeah. And that's that's I was shut down by Hitler and so was the entire about houses you couldn't get a job if you do there.

And Hello Scott this graduation paper signed by God in ski and misspelled the roll when he graduated from the bout and his main interest and he was accepted in doing the station's zines and painting and sculptor. What did he do after rock. Good Lord came into power and he was not able to paint anymore. Well the he was assigned from the school from the bus to the theater. That's up theatre. And that's how he staged his eyes became very well appreciated but close to this of theatre and there was nothing for these artists to do. So he went back to Prague where his wife was there. I mean was born her family was there and went in to study photography for two years in Vienna and then he became a photographer a commercial portrait of whatever there.

And. And of course the war came and bombing and concentration camps. Nineteen forty four until the war ended. And at this time you were in California. Yes I was you know that you were involved in music and dance and I had my go to your ideas of motion a movement that this well was my contribution in to. Well my school advertised there's a difference between motion and movement. Yes there is a difference between motion and it's the same as nonobjective painting is different from a thing you paint from a model movement. When you studied dance you start with five positions on the legs. Ballet right. And then you continue taking the mechanical and the technical thing which is necessary but. When you coordinated with

the motion of music you get a unification that you don't get by going just by learning is human to scale. You say so the motion in relation to music became the thing I could do because music I was quite good musician. And so this became sort of the thing and it was written up quite a bit. And I enjoyed doing it and did a lot of performing. So did you find quite a lot of stimulation from seeing the works of condensing at that time. Yes I did. I through my old work with Downs I understood him. Eventually I coordinated myself with his work and with the work of nonobjective painters especially the ones that were like and then he was very accurate severances in his the

movement in a canvas or whatever. So and that was with many a nonobjective paintings or painters. I began to co-ordinate myself with them and then when was it that you actually met Mr. Bergman. Well after I got the position that the same nonobjective painting I was there for a year. And then this came and got this position there. The top man in full charge of the graphic department there and almost directly after he came from Prague from Prague and so I spoke some German and he didn't speak much English and I could hear what a babe would say. She'd tell you ask her she lost you know my name in the museum became a she. So that's how you got to know each other.

Yeah so I found out that Thomas was a very fine paint and interesting things and I was prepared during the year I had been there before you came and of course he was very knowledgeable. You know and explained a great many interesting things to me about how and why and how to try to do. I've done quite a bit of sort of. Skimp designs on my own. But having had to do the theater a great deal I became very interested in his talk about this of theater and the work that he had done in the theater. So we had that very much in common. Well I'd like to thank you very much for this first interview and next week we'll be talking more of course about Hans about your husband and we'll be getting into the situation more in detail and I hope then that we can develop more of the actual way that you

know the appreciation of his paintings does occur. And so I look forward to that and being with you again next week at this time. You. Will recall. This is Frank Anthony. Thank you for joining Mrs. Elsa Backman. And this first of two programs honoring her former husband Hannah's Backman. Next Friday Mrs. back man's interview goes into detail about the style and technique of her husband's work. Good afternoon.

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