10 Facts About Xanti Schawinsky

Alexander Schawinsky, known as Xanti Schawinsky was a Swiss painter, photographer and theatre designer.

An alumnus of the Bauhaus, Xanti Schawinsky belonged to Bauhaus founder and architect Walter Gropius' social circle.

Xanti Schawinsky attended school in Basel from 1910 to 1914, and then high school in Zurich from 1915 to 1921.

Xanti Schawinsky apprenticed at the architecture office of Theodor Merill in Cologne until 1923.

Xanti Schawinsky was close friends with Herbert Bayer and Marcel Breuer and was godfather of Julia Bayer, the 1929-born daughter of Herbert and Irene Bayer.

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In 1929 Xanti Schawinsky went to Magdeburg, hired by Johannes Goderitz to head the graphic department of the municipal building authority.

Xanti Schawinsky was invited to Black Mountain College in the US in 1936 by Josef Albers and the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited his work.

Xanti Schawinsky designed the North Carolina Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair and, with Breuer and Gropius, the Pennsylvania Pavilion.

From 1961 Xanti Schawinsky travelled for longer periods to Europe, building a second home in Oggebbio on Lake Maggiore and exhibited in Germany.

In 1936, Xanti Schawinsky married Irene von Debschitz, the daughter of Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski, and their son Ben was born in 1939.