The Giedion World: Sigfried Giedion and Carola Giedion-Welcker in Dialogue

Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968) and Carola Giedion-Welcker (1893–1979) were among the most influential scholars of art and architectural history during the early twentieth century. Of particular impact was their role in connecting leading protagonists of modernism in architecture, art, and literature, such as Alvar Aalto, Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Breuer, Max Ernst, Walter Gropius, Barbara Hepworth, Le Corbusier, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. The interactions they initiated, for example, on the new vision in photography or the synthesis of arts continue to be highly relevant to the present day.
           
Drawing on a rich trove of documents—16,000 letters and 10,000 photographs and negatives, among other materials—that has only recently become fully accessible for research, The Giedion World offers a long-awaited reevaluation of Sigfried and Carola Giedion-Welcker’s work and lasting significance. Featuring a vast number of previously unpublished documents and photographs alongside excerpts from the extensive correspondence between the pair and their artist friends and colleagues in academia, it provides unique and manifold insight into the “Giedion universe.”