Académie Européenne Méditerranée

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Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld from Amsterdam, Erich Mendelsohn from Berlin and Amédée Ozenfant from Paris planned a European art school on the Côte d'Azur under the name Académie Européenne Méditerranée ( AEM for short ) in the early 1930s .

The academy project, based on the Bauhaus Dessau model, was to be implemented with sponsors and shareholders on the Côte d'Azur on 104 hectares of land near Cavalière (between Cap Nègre and the Pointe du Rossignol and the villages of Le Lavandou and Saint-Tropez ) . The plan was to recruit artists from different European countries as professors. An advertising leaflet was written by the initiators and the organizational scheme and curriculum published and distributed in five languages. The teaching program was designed to be multidisciplinary and encompassed all genres of art including music, film and dance.

Inspiration in the sense of the Pensée de midi

The idea of ​​the academy in the south of France on the Mediterranean goes back to the concept of the Dessau Reformanstalt. The AEM agenda set itself the goal of combining modern art and the ancient Mediterranean tradition. The Academy propagated the vision of a united Europe, whose identity should be the culture of the Mediterranean region. In the summer of 1932, Wijdeveld and Mendelsohn traveled to the French Mediterranean coast to find an academy site. In early 1933 a plot of land was selected on the heights of Cavalière overlooking the Mediterranean. The property was bought with sponsors and plans for the academy buildings were drawn up by renowned architects and artists from various nations.

Founding members

In the "Comité d'Honneur" important personalities from science, art and politics were appointed as members, such as the German physicist Albert Einstein , the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde and Frank Lloyd Wright , the English set designer Edward Gordon Craig , the Berlin theater director Max Reinhardt , the French poet Paul Valéry and the musicians Leopold Stokowski and Igor Stravinsky .

Directors and course leaders

The directors were Wijdeveld, Ozenfant and Mendelsohn, who were to lead the theater, painting and architecture departments. Artists of international standing were won for the teaching staff: Paul Hindemith from Berlin , who was to take over the music section, Paul Bonifas , who was in charge of the L'Esprit Nouveau magazine published by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier , the ceramics department, the Spanish sculptor and Pablo Picasso's friend Pablo Gargallo heads the Sculpture Department, the English interior designer Serge Chermayeff , and the sculptor and typographer Eric Gill head the relevant departments. No appointments had yet been made for the dance, textile processing, photography and film courses.

End of the academy project

Shortly before construction began on July 16, 1934, a devastating forest fire destroyed the vegetation on the property. Wijdeveld, who worked with students on site in Cavalière on the academy project, wrote in his diary: “ We saw the catastrophe with horror. The mountains between Le Lavandou and Le Rayol have become a gray mass. “The property offers the“ sight of a battlefield. A continuation of the academy plans is therefore impossible. There does not seem to be any blessing on our venture. “But the adverse political circumstances of the time also contributed to the failure of this retrospectively prophetic educational project.

The corporation was then dissolved. In the 1960s, Wijdeveld and Amédée Ozenfant were the last to sell their property shares. The dream of a Mediterranean academy for the purpose of a European exchange of ideas and the introduction of a “classical modern” was not realized due to the adverse circumstances of the time.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ First edition of this promotional leaflet for the ambitious Wijdevelds project to build a kind of "counter-Bauhaus", a European art boarding school for students on the Côte d'Azur near Saint Tropez. (Wijdeveld was best known for its famous Wendingen magazine ).
  2. ↑ the philosophy of the Mediterranean cf. on this Michel Onfray : La pensée de midi. Archeology d'une gauche libertaire. Galilée, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-7186-0755-9 .

literature

  • Ita Heinze-Greenberg: The European Mediterranean Academy. Hendricus Th. Wijdeveld, Erich Mendelsohn and the art school project on the Côte d'Azur. gta Verlag, Zurich 2019. ISBN 978-3-85676-270-4
  • Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld, Erich Mendelsohn, Amédée Ozenfant (eds.): Académie Européenne “Méditerranée”. Architectuur - Sign art - Beeldhouwkunst en Ceramiek - Textiel - Typography - Theater - Muziek en Dans - Photography and film. Self-published, Amsterdam 1933.
  • Alfred Werner Maurer : Architectural icons Provence, Côte d'Azur + Riviera. Philologus Verlag, Basel 2008.