The artist Sascha Schneider between symbolism, sexuality and society. A panel by art-historian Christiane Starck.

The upcoming lecture centers painter, sculptor and graphic artist Sascha Schneider (1870-1927).

Schneider was especially famous for his symbolistic monumental works and his artistic collaboration with German novelist Karl May. In 1904, he was appointed professor at the Grand Ducal Art School in Weimar and developed new ideas about the human body and bodybuilding as an art form. As an artist, he focused on the beauty of the male nude. He never hid the fact that he was gay and considered himself a social outsider in more than one ways – as an artist and as a gay man. After being threatened to be blackmailed because of his homosexuality he left Germany. In Italy he developed new ideas concerning the change of society through art. These ideas climaxed in the founding of the Kraft-Kunst-Institut (Strength-Art-Institute) after World War I in Dresden, Germany. The artistic evolution will show the connections of this unconventional artist and his art with our times.

Christiane Starck studied art history and archaeology of the roman provinces at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany. Starck graduated in 2009 with a master’s degree and will publish her PhD thesis about the artist Sascha Schneider in 2014.