Weininger, Andor, 1899-1986

Andor Weininger (1899-1986) was a Hungarian architect, artist, designer, draftsman, and painter.

Born in Hungary in 1899, Weininger studied art and design at the Bauhaus during the early 1920s. In 1923 he co-founded the Bauhaus Jazz Band. Andor Weininger produced a body of work related to the stage, attaining his greatest success with his Mechanical Stage-Review, a kind of moving abstract painting, and with his design for a spherical theatre. After graduating in 1925, Weininger stayed on at Walter Gropius’ request, to act as a kind of public relations official for the school. After leaving the Bauhaus in 1928, he and his German fiancée Eva Fernbach supported themselves through Modernist furniture design. The Weiningers married in 1931, and escaped Nazi Germany for the Netherlands in 1938, where Andor produced Surrealist and Biomorphic Modernist works. The Weiningers emigrated to Canada with their daughter Cornelia in 1951. (text adapted from Gallery One One One, School of Art, University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus, Winnipeg, MB, CANADA. https://www.umanitoba.ca/schools/art/content/galleryoneoneone/weinint.html)

From 1917 to 1918 he studied law, first at the University of Pécs, then at the University of Budapest. The turbulence of the revolutionary period immediately following the end of the First World War in newly independent Hungary, and particularly in Budapest, interrupted his studies. From 1921 to 1925 he studied in the Mural Painting Workshop, headed by Vasily Kandinsky at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. He then switched to the class in design for the stage, staying until 1928, taught by Osklar Schlemmer after the Bauhaus had moved to Dessau. During these years, Weininger's work was interrupted by long periods spent devising cabarets, providing set designs, acting, and working as a musician. After 1928 he earned his living in Berlin as an interior decorator and designer. Emigrating to Holland in 1938, he worked as an illustrator and independent painter. In 1951 he emigrated again, this time to Canada, then settled in New York in 1958 where he worked at the Art Research Center. Weininger died in New York in 1986. (text from ZKM Center for Art and Media, https://zkm.de/en/person/andor-weininger)