Entfaltungsräume - Begegnungsräume. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis Arbeit mit und für Kinder

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Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000 Vienna) is one of Austria's first women architects, being a pioneer of social architecture, the inventor of the Frankfurt kitchen, an activist in the women's and peace movement as well as a prominent resistance fighter against the Nazi dictatorship. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (Vienna 1898-1944 Auschwitz), whose work has only recently been recognized more broadly, combines visual art, architecture, theater and education with a complex political commitment in her transdisciplinary practice. Both designers were born in Vienna at almost the same time, began their training at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt and enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeschule shortly afterwards. Both Dicker-Brandeis and Schütte-Lihotzky took a clear left-wing political stance. Their practices of criticism and resistance against fascism as well as their identification as socialists translate consistently into the formal and institutional levels of their works. While Schütte-Lihotzky quickly gained recognition, was involved in international projects as an architect, survived National Socialism and compiled a comprehensive archive of her work, Dicker-Brandeis' emigration, deportation and murder resulted in the destruction of all her buildings, the dispersion and partial loss of her work and its precarious documentation. The reception of both designers is characterized by gender-stereotypical reductions and only takes place after a long phase of structural oblivion. The symposium, co-organized by the Collection and Archive, University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Center, explores these and other parallels and differences between the two positions across three topics. The contributions explore planned, built, artistic and discursive spaces in which Dicker-Brandeis' and Schütte-Lihotzky's preoccupation with alternative pedagogy manifests. They contextualize the political forms and conditions in their practice and reconstruct their intellectual biographies.

Title of Event

Margarete Schütte-Lithotzky und Friedl Dicker-Brandeis Raum – Kunst – Politik. Zwei Gestalterinnen im 20. Jahrhundert

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