Themen

«One must be able to think in colors and forms as one is able to think in terms and thoughts.»

Rudolph Steiner

Rudolf Steiner's Artistic Work

Blackboard drawings

When Rudolf Steiner held a lecture, he used to create drawings on a blackboard to illustrate his ideas.It was in times of World War I, when a lady from the audience stringed black cardboards to the blackboard before Rudolf Steiner began his lecture. 1100 pictures, drawn by Rudolf Steiner himself, have been preserved that way.

These were publicly presented for the first time in 1999 through a travelling exhibition. From that time on, Steiner’s blackboard drawings have been widely associated with the visual arts.

They are kept and conserved by the administrators in Dornach, close to Basel.

“When looking into one's inner being with ordinary consciousness, one finds only the reflections, the mirror-pictures, of external life. To find one's way into the etheric-imaginative world, one has to look behind this mirror, to move from the abstract, dead thinking, as it were, to the inner, living thinking. It is in the living thinking that thoughts themselves become forces.”

This quote from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner held in 1923 was translated with reference to the following lectures published on rsarchive.org:

 

Blackboard drawing "Social World"