Karla Grosch
1928 - 1932
A NEW CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL
It was part of the spirit of the 1920s, and sports were also a fixed element of the schedule at the Bauhaus. Teachers were employed for regular lessons, including one artist who would later enjoy considerable fame: Karla Grosch, a student of the famous dancer Gret Palucca. She started teaching at the Bauhaus for the summer semester of 1928.
The Bauhaus building in Dessau offered all sort of options for sports. Soccer games could be played in the surrounding fields, and gymnastics exercises could be performed on the roof of the studio building. There was even a gymnastics room in the elevated basement level of the building. Countless photographs document all these activities, many of them featuring Karla Grosch.
Other photos depict her as a dancer on the Bauhaus stage where, together with Oskar Schlemmer, she developed movement experiments to enable a new connection between body and spirit. Karla Grosch was very close to the Klee family and occupied a room in their house.
„So bin ich halt, hell-dunkel, warm-kalt, oben-unten.“
Karla Grosch
Today, visitors who come to the Bauhaus building and the Masters’ Houses and look into the Gymnastics Room, the stage, or the Klee House following in the tracks of Karla Grosch will sense the dynamic energy that must have emanated from this unusual woman.
