Self-Portrait

Trained as a painter, Georg Muche joined the Bauhaus in 1920. With Johannes Itten, he first taught the preliminary course, which focused on the inherent properties of different materials and their interplay, then directed his own classes in sculpture and weaving. Muche took up photography in 1921–22, employing the camera to explore form and texture. The spherical images in metal balls (Kugeln), objects common in German households as well as the residences and studios at the Bauhaus, inspired experiments in reflection and distortion there for years. (A wave of interest in photography, for teachers and students alike, began in the mid-1920s, but an official course in the subject was not offered until 1929.) Here we see the artist at his desk, with a Bauhaus brochure in the foreground and other elements of his work—a glass ball, an architectural model, his camera, and a painting—surrounding him.