Oskar Fischinger facts for kids

Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (born June 22, 1900 – died January 31, 1967) was a German-American artist. He was famous for his abstract animated films and paintings. He created these musical animations long before computers or music videos existed!

Oskar Fischinger also made special effects for movies. One famous film he worked on was Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon (1929). This was one of the first science fiction films about rockets. His work even inspired Walt Disney's movie Fantasia.

Fischinger made more than 50 short films. He also painted around 800 artworks. Many of his paintings are now in museums and galleries around the world. His film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) is very important. It is kept in the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Oskar Fischinger's Life and Work

Oskar Fischinger was born in Gelnhausen, a town near Frankfurt, Germany. After school, he worked for a company that built organs. But this job ended when the owners had to join the army in World War I. Next, he worked in an architect's office. He was also called to serve, but he was not healthy enough for combat. After the war, his family moved to Frankfurt. There, Oskar went to a trade school and became an engineer.

Starting His Career

In Frankfurt, Fischinger met a theater critic named Bernhard Diebold. In 1921, Diebold introduced him to Walter Ruttmann. Ruttmann was a pioneer in making abstract films. At this time, Fischinger was experimenting with colored liquids. He also used materials like wax and clay to create art.

He invented a special "Wax Slicing Machine." This machine could slice through wax or clay while a camera filmed it. This allowed him to create moving images from his sculptures. Fischinger told Ruttmann about his invention, and Ruttmann was very interested.

Fischinger moved to Munich. He let Ruttmann use his wax slicing machine. Ruttmann used it to create backgrounds for The Adventures of Prince Achmed. This was an animated fairy tale film by Lotte Reiniger. Fischinger also made many of his own abstract films using the machine. Some of these are now called Wax Experiments.

In 1924, Fischinger started a company with an American businessman. They made funny cartoons for older audiences. He also kept making his own abstract films. He tried new ways of filming, including using many projectors at once. In 1926 and 1927, he put on shows with multiple projectors. These shows had music and were called Fieber (Fever), Vakuum, and Macht (Power).

Fischinger faced money problems. He borrowed from his family and his landlady. To avoid his bill collectors, he secretly left Munich for Berlin in June 1927. He took only his important equipment. He walked 350 miles through the countryside. Along the way, he filmed single frames of his journey. This footage was later released as the film Walking from Munich to Berlin.

Working in Berlin

When Fischinger arrived in Berlin, he borrowed money from a relative. He set up a studio and soon began creating special effects for movies. However, his own ideas for cartoons were not accepted by film companies.

In 1928, he got a steady job working on the movie Woman in the Moon. This film was directed by Fritz Lang. In his free time, Fischinger experimented with animating charcoal drawings on paper. He made a series of abstract films called Studies. These films were perfectly matched to popular and classical music. Some of his early Studies were even shown in theaters with ads for new music records. This makes them some of the very first music videos!

His Studies (Numbers 1 through 12) were very popular. Many were shown in theaters all over the world, even in Japan and South America. His Studie Nr. 5 was praised at a color-music research meeting in 1931. In 1932, Universal Studios bought the rights to show one of his Studies in America. Because of his amazing special effects, people called him "the Wizard of Friedrichstraße." In 1932, Fischinger married Elfriede Fischinger.

After 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany. They did not like abstract art and called it "degenerate art". This made it very hard for artists like Fischinger to show their work. Even so, Oskar Fischinger continued to make films and commercials. He made Muratti greift ein (1934) for a cigarette company. He also made Kreise (Circles) (1933–34) for an advertising agency. The colorful Muratti commercial, with its stop-motion dancing cigarettes, was shown worldwide.

Fischinger managed to finish his abstract film Komposition in Blau in 1935. It was well-received by critics. An agent from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) saw his films in Hollywood. Ernst Lubitsch, a famous director, was very impressed. Soon, an agent from Paramount Pictures asked Fischinger if he would like to work in the United States. Fischinger quickly said yes.

Moving to Hollywood

Oskar Fischinger arrived in Hollywood in February 1936. Paramount Studios gave him an office, German-speaking helpers, and an English teacher. He also received a good weekly salary. He and Elfriede spent time with other German artists who had moved to America.

While waiting for his first project, Fischinger sketched and painted. He started a film called Radio Dynamics, now known as Allegretto. This film was perfectly timed to a song by Ralph Rainger. It was meant to be in the movie The Big Broadcast of 1937. However, Paramount only planned to release the movie in black-and-white. Fischinger had not known this when he started his colorful film. Paramount would not even let him test his film in color. So, Fischinger asked to leave his contract and left Paramount.

Years later, with help from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, he bought the film back. Fischinger then repainted the cels (animation sheets) and made a color version he liked. He called it Allegretto. This film became one of his most popular and successful works.

Most of Fischinger's attempts to make films in America were difficult. He made An Optical Poem (1937) for MGM, set to Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. But he did not earn any money from it due to the studio's accounting. He also designed the J. S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor part for Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940). But he left the project without credit because Disney changed his designs. Fischinger also helped with the special effects for the Blue Fairy's wand in Pinocchio (1940). In the 1950s, he created animated TV commercials, including one for Muntz TV.

The Museum of Non-Objective Painting asked him to make a film for a John Philip Sousa march. They wanted him to show loyalty to America. Then, they insisted he make a film to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. But Fischinger wanted to make a film without sound to show the beauty of his abstract images. So, he secretly made the silent film Radio Dynamics (1942).

Because filmmaking was so frustrating, Fischinger started painting more with oils. The Guggenheim Foundation had asked for an animated film. But Fischinger made his Bach film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) differently. He filmed himself painting, taking one frame each time he made a brush stroke. The many layers in the painting matched the structure of the Bach music.

Even though he never got money for his personal films again (only for commercials), Motion Painting No. 1 won a major award in Brussels in 1949. Three of Fischinger's films were also named among the world's greatest films in 1984. He passed away on January 31, 1967, at age 66.

The Academy Film Archive has saved many of Oskar Fischinger's films. These include Motion Painting No. 1, Squares, and Spirals.

The Lumigraph

In the late 1940s, Fischinger invented a device called the Lumigraph. He received a patent for it in 1955. Some people mistakenly called it a "color organ." Fischinger hoped to sell the Lumigraph to many people, but this did not happen.

The Lumigraph created images by pressing against a rubber screen. This screen would push into a narrow beam of colored light. The size of the screen was limited by how far a performer could reach. Two people were needed to operate it. One person moved the screen to make images. The second person changed the colors of the lights.

The machine itself was silent. But it was always performed with music. Fischinger gave several shows in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco in the early 1950s. He performed with different types of classical and popular music. Many people were amazed by the beautiful images the machine created.

In 1964, the Lumigraph was used in the science fiction film The Time Travelers. In the movie, it was called a "lumichord." This was not what Fischinger intended, but the filmmakers decided to use it that way. Fischinger's son, Conrad, even built two more Lumigraph machines of different sizes. After Oskar's death, his wife Elfriede and daughter Barbara gave performances with the Lumigraph.

Today, one Lumigraph is in a museum in Frankfurt. The other two are in California. In February 2007, Barbara Fischinger performed with the original Lumigraph in Frankfurt. She also performed with it in Amsterdam in 2012.

Oskar Fischinger's Films

See also

In Spanish: Oskar Fischinger para niños

• Clavier à lumières
• Len Lye
• List of German painters
• Music visualization
• Visual music