EDMUND KESTING
German
Edmund Kesting was a painter, photographer, and
art educator. He founded two private art schools
and an artists’ group, and was intimately involved in
the avant-garde movement of the 1920s. The sen-
tence ‘‘A painter looks through the lens,’’ was taken
from an article in the late 1930s, and the title of a
book edited by Kesting in 1958, aptly demonstrates
how he conceived of himself as a mediator between
painting and photography. He propagated the close
connection between these two art forms and saw
himself literally as a ‘‘light painter,’’ an artist draw-
ing with light.
Born in 1882 in Dresden, Kesting very early
showed his artistic and musical talents. After his
intermediary exams, he attended a school of com-
mercial arts and joined theDresdner Kunstakademie
in 1915. In 1919, still a student himself, he founded
with painter Carl Piepho the private school of
designDer Weg(The Path) and taught there. In
1926, he established a branch of this school in Ber-
lin. Both schools had to be closed down in 1933 with
the advent of the Hitler regime, and, classified as an
‘‘entarteter’’ (degenerate) artist by the Nazis, Kest-
ing was banned from painting and exhibiting.
In the 1920s, Kesting mainly worked as a painter,
inspired by expressionism as well as dadaism and
constructivism. Due to his encounter and ensuing
friendship in the beginning of that decade with poet,
musician, and essayist Herwarth Walden, who
founded the artists’ group and art gallery theDer
Sturm(The Storm), Kesting came into close contact
with a number of avant-garde figures. From 1923
onwards he participated in all major exhibitions of
that circle. Under that influence, Kesting produced
a number of paper collages he called ‘‘Schnittgra-
phiken’’ (cut graphics). Deeply impressed by the
works of the Russian Constructivists Alexandr
Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and Wassily Kandinsky,
Kesting increasingly incorporated elements of con-
structivism into his paintings.
Kesting first came into touch with photography
during his experimental works with photograms in
- Artists like La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy and El Lis-
sitzky, who themselves were experimenting with the
medium, enhanced his interest in photography. He
saw himself as one of these innovators when he self-
consciously stated that ‘‘a small circle of photo-
graphing painters decided the fate of photography,
and I am one of them, too.’’ In contrast to other
constructivist photographers, however, Kesting
saw photography not so much as a creative medium
in the sense of the artists associated with the move-
mentNeue Sachlichkeit(The New Objectivity), but
rather as an artistic form with which he expected to
master the classic repertoire of expression and
design in a modern way. Thus, photography was
simultaneously creative and apparative to him.
Kesting started experimenting with the technique
of multiple exposure around 1926–1927. The first
samples are portraits of his wife Gerda Mu ̈ller-
Kesting and of sculptures of theDresdner Zwinger.
It was by accident that he came upon the idea
of consciously using this technique in his work.
Although Kesting is sometimes seen as the founder
of this ‘‘sandwich technique,’’ this credit actually
goes to the Swedish painter Oscar Gustav Rejlan-
der, who preceded him in creating doubled images
and constructed scenes by means of multiply ex-
posed negatives.
Kesting used to see portrait photography as a great
challenge, and he worked on it mainly until 1937 and
during the last decade of his work period. His models
were initially his family—wife and child—and later
increasingly friends, relatives, pupils of the Weg
school as well as artists, writers, and other VIPs. He
persistently used multiple exposure and thereby tried
to visualise the mental and lively aspects of the por-
trayed personalities. The literal ‘‘multi-layeredness’’
of his pictures and the concentration on shades of
light, the modelling of light and shadow, were his
means to convey and transfer meaning. Kesting
almost exclusively used this technique inside the stu-
dio; outdoor multiple exposures are rare.
His portraits can be classified into dominant
categories: one type is the montage of profile and
half figure photographs, another the combination
of (half) profile and silhouette pictures. A third
group consists of photographs of women in mirrors
or with veils.
From 1930 to around 1936, Kesting also did
dance photography, emphasising the movement
and rhythm of the bodies. He enlarged his reper-KESTING, EDMUND