Harry Kramer (1925-1997)

Professions: Sculptor

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  Kramer, Harry 1925 Lingen - 1997 Kassel KM 123 (Automobile Sculpture)1963.

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Harry Kramer Biography

(b Lingen, 25 Jan 1925). German sculptor. During World War II he worked as a hairdresser and fashion-designer and in the first post-war years trained as an actor, dancer and choreographer. This training influenced his work with marionettes, the first figurines of his ‘mechanical theatre’, begun in 1951. He used the mechanically controlled puppet to clarify movement-sequences, thus combining mechanical and balletic elements and breaking with the narrative tradition of ballet. The jointed dolls and wheel-figures, based on the human body and created for 13 Scenes (1953–5), were soon replaced by self-propelled machines. Dehumanized movement took on a self-sufficient quality in this motorial dance. Kramer’s exploration of the relation between people and technology brought him into the orbit of the Zero group. After moving to Paris in 1956, he produced 12-minute films in collaboration with Wolfgang Ramsbott (e.g. Die Stadt , 1956, Défense 58–24 , 1958) and his ballet Nachtimpuls (performed in Paris in 1961), which illustrate the confrontation of animate and inanimate, fantasy and calculation.

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