Page 150 - Libro Max Cetto

Max Cetto: Architect and Historiographer of Mexican Modernity

of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1919, Hans Poelzig said that architecture is a product of a
nationalist state of mind, an “ars magna” in which the conviction that has been established
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is to create for eternity.” This thought by Poelzig, months after the end of the war, reflects
the intentions behind his activity as it was underway. The 1914 Bismarck Memorial and the
House of Friendship (a competition organized by the Deutscher Werkbund for Istanbul
in 1917) are clear evidence of the monumental consciousness associated with permanence.
In 1919, Poelzig built what would later represent a true Gesamtkunstwerk, Max Rein-
hardt’s Grosses Schauspielhaus, a space adapted from the Berlin circus. In it, Poelzig unleashed
the themes that identify him with early expressionism: the cave, the cavern and the grotto
(like the Taut pavilion in Cologne) that express that tectonic character opposed to all regu-
latory, stereotomic lines, and so the dome is full of stalactites. Polychromy was another sign:
expressionists transformed the world through color. Architectonically, Reinhardt’s theater
and the creation of the Bauhaus were the most important actions of the young Weimar
Republic, sharing a common genealogy and ideology.
As the aftermath of the war degenerated into social instability and general depression,
expressionism died in the proclamation of the artist’s commitment to an art for the people.
Poelzig declared that expressionism –like socialism– is the cry against matter, against evil,
against the machine, against centralism, that expressionism is for the spirit, for God, for
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man in man.” Here, Hans Poelzig’s work as an academic takes on deeper meaning. His
ability to involve the student was perhaps unmatched: he did not set himself up as a figure
to be imitated, but set free their inner expression and fluidity. He was the ideal promoter of
those projects that were developed in his classrooms. Therein lies perhaps the seed we are
looking for to show that expressionism spread silently and modestly within the “new archi-
tecture,” losing its corporeality and obvious presence. Expressionism lived long enough to
be learned and carried on within, even after it was considered extinct. In the postwar period,
there was a new stage of expressionism in which the current underwent a split. One faction
was more traditional and its use of materials was less inventive; the other was more radical
in the sense that it tried to give architecture a new basis.
It is daring but necessary to declare that expressionism dissolved itself in rational archi-
tecture when Mies van der Rohe, who also went through an expressionist period –as can be
seen in his plans for glass skyscrapers on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin (1919-21) and his role as
leader of Der Ring, the successor to “pro-art for the people” groups like Arbeitsrat für Kunst
(1919) and the Novembergruppe (1918)– was appointed by the Deutscher Werkbund as
director of the Weißenhofsiedlung exhibition in Stuttgart (1927). Here one can see “the com-
plete victory of the Neue Sachlichkeit is shown there. All the buildings were rectangular and
pure in shape even in spite of the power of the “ex-expressionists” such as Poelzig, Taut and
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Scharoun.” At that time, curved lines, colorful and twisting through space, gave way to the
functional line with pure colors, announcing the arrival of “new architecture”; nevertheless,
they would remain the basis for modern creation.
Max Cetto’s academic training took place at the heart of the events that led to the
formation of the Weimar Republic. In 1921, he moved to Darmstadt to begin his archi-
tectural studies. Only one year later, Cetto decided to transfer and left for Munich, where
he was drawn to the classes taught by Heinrich Wölfflin, which he attended for an equally
short period of time. In 1923, his restlessness led him to Berlin, to the design seminar then
taught by Hans Poelzig at the Technical University of Berlin. His architectural culture
was thus nourished by expressionism, a current in which he enthusiastically remained. This
can be seen in the series of studies for the powerful, colorful sets that Cetto created for

4 Dennis Sharp, Modern Architecture and Expressionism (London: Longmans Green, 1966).
5 Wolfgang Pehnt, La arquitectura expresionista (Barcelona: G.G., 1975).
6 Sharp, Modern Architecture and Expressionism.

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