Page 148 - Libro Max Cetto

Max Cetto: Architect and Historiographer of Mexican Modernity

Max Cetto
and Ernst May,
photograph from
the archive of
Bettina Cetto.

Hans Poelzig and German Expressionism

Only recently has the architectural historiography concerned itself with that movement,
brief in duration, known as “expressionism,” and the way it was influenced by and –more
importantly– influenced the “new architecture” of the first half of the twentieth century. The
pre-1950 visions of this movement call one’s attention, as the major texts speak of an ex-
citing but ephemeral architectural avant-garde, sometimes in open opposition to the Neue
Sachlichkeit and almost always as discreet factions. In Space, Time and Architecture, Sigfried
Giedion writes, “The expressionist influence could not be a healthy one or perform any ser-
1
vice for architecture.” Giedion did not consider expressionism proper for facing the utilitar-
ian and constructive needs of the time and the chapters devoted to expressionism in the his-
tory of architecture are still being written. Time has shown that this movement, fractured by
the First World War and weakened by postwar social conditions, filtered out through our
firm modernist base of the early 1900s far beyond the obvious curved line. Today, however,
the explanation that what had happened was an alternative to the Modern Movement in
Germany satisfies some historians, a mere complement to the “true” face of modernism.
There is no doubt that time did no favors to expressionism; the constructive reality
of the time abruptly halted that internal reaction. However, and perhaps unintentionally,
architecture formed a more solid body than that which could be raised with stones, one of
ideas and papers, the most efficient way to touch man and the best way to endure. Archi-
tecture can become poetry and poetry can come out of it, as proven by Paul Scheerbart’s
Glasarchitektur (1914). The Bauhaus, that academic foundation for the “new architecture,”

1 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941).

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