Soul Man - Rudolph Steiner

Towering figure Rudolph Steiner at work on a sculpture 1919. Gerteud von Heydebrand-Osthoff

A Steiner blackboard drawing. Rudolph Steiner Archiv, Domach

Clockwise from Left: A model of his colour chamber. The Goetheanum; A room atributed to his follower, Oswald Dubach. Clockwise from Top Left: Andreas Sutterlin


"Practically no one outside anthroposophical circles, it seems, lifted specific shapes or motifs from Steiner, but his concepts fascinated creative figures across the aesthetic spectrum. The exhibition will include pages from Wassily Kandinsky’s diary with jottings about Steiner, fan mail from Piet Mondrian, a note from Franz Kafka requesting Steiner’s comments about a new manuscript and a 1923 invitation from the architect Richard Neutra, then a disciple of the Expressionist master Erich Mendelsohn, to visit the new Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany. Luminaries in every medium warmed to Steiner’s conviction that the arts could make intangible, universal law..

I can’t imagine a better place to ponder such questions than inside a farbkammer, or “color chamber,” which Steiner conceived for solitary therapeutic relaxation. Each polyhedral room was to be lined in one solid tone and suffused with soothing light. Century-old working farbkammer prototypes have vanished, but a rare group of sketches and small metal models for a 12-chamber series recently turned up at Dornach’s Rudolf Steiner Archiv. Vitra has constructed a full-size lilac-colored dodecahedron, about nine feet high, where visitors of every age will be welcome to bask in Dr. Steiner’s aura — mind, body and soul."