Rudolf Steiner's Eurythmy Figures

Each Eurythmy Figure is designed with three elements, two of which influence the shape, and all three of which determine the colors. There is the movement element, which is the pose of the figure. Then there is the veil position, which adds to the overall volume of the form. Steiner calls this shape and color the feeling of the figure. Finally there is the character element, which functions as a highlight color in specific location over specific part of the posed figure. All 35 figures are designed from these three elements, and each figure is made with only these three colors (though where they overlap, additional colors are formed).

As described by Rudolf Steiner in a presentation in 1923:

You must not see these eurythmy figures as sculptural replicas of the human form or the like. That belongs to sculpture, to painting. Here, in these eurythmy figures, only that which works eurythmically in the human being should really be represented. Therefore, it could not be a matter of expressing the resting human figure in a beautiful sculptoral way. Whoever believes that he must see a beautiful human face in eurythmy is making a mistake about eurythmy. One can just as well see an ugly human face in eurythmy, for it does not depend on whether the human face is beautiful or ugly, young or old, and so on, but on how this human being who performs eurythmy can let their whole human beinghood pass over into the formed and formative movements.

First of all, the movement that is carried out in eurythmy, for example, the movement of the arms, of the legs, is recorded in the whole design of the figures. And then it is recorded in the veil position, how you can emotionally deepen the movement by somehow grasping the veil, pulling it on, throwing it, letting it fall, waving it, which expresses the soul life more intellectually through eurythmy, through this veil movement.

So that one can say: In the formation of the movement lies that which is more simply the expression for what the soul wants to say through visible language. But just as the words have their timbre, their special tone, through the feeling that is in them, so also the movement through the way in which, for example, fear, when it is expressed in a sentence, or joy, delight, are put into the movement by the eurythmist. And this they can then express, when they use the veil, by the undulating movement, lifting, lowering and so on of the veil, so that the movement accompanied by the veil is the emotional movement. And the movement accompanied by the inner muscular tension is the movement that carries the character. If the eurythmist tenses their muscles in the right way, or leaves them relaxed, this passes over in feeling to the spectator, and one actually feels that which can lie in the eurythmic language according to

The idea to make Eurythmy Figures on plywood came from Rudolf Steiner. His collaborator, the sculptor Edith Maryon, had been struggling to represent Eurythmy gestures artistically. Her own inclinations were much more towards naturalism, and so she made a freestanding sculpture in the ancient Greek style, and a few bass reliefs, and even experimented with using cellophane for the Eurythmy veils. It was in reaction to these efforts that Steiner made his sketches.

Steiner’s sketches for the Eurythmy Figures were designed to be two dimensional, and were moderately stylized. And it was Steiner’s idea to use plywood and paint as a medium. It is not clear to me exactly which paints they used, and they likely experimented with several. But judging by the fading, and by Steiner’s dislike of benzene-based chemical dyes and preference for plant-based pigments, I would guess that they used plant-based watercolor paints on the original figures.

For this series I wanted to use something archival quality, that is materials would still hold their color in 100 years. This would require using pigment based art supplies, and I settled on the color inks made by the Dr. Ph. Martin company. These inks behave in many ways like a watercolor paint, with one exception. Unlike watercolors, once they have dried they will not liquefy or blend again. That is, you have one opportunity to lay down the color, with 60 to 90 seconds before it dries. It is much more like working on a fresco than on a watercolor painting. This meant that each layer had to be laid down in one continuous application of color. The outline and the interior space had to be even while wet, and adjacent areas had to be worked in before the initial area dried. Otherwise you ended up laying a second layer of ink down, which would noticeably change the intensity.

If the disadvantage was that you had to work quickly, the advantage is that the inks layer beautifully and blend just like watercolors,. In addition, these India inks and are both permanently colorfast and waterproof. For layering, a light blue over a yellow produces a light green. And using slightly diluted inks maintained most of the color intensity while allowing the grain of the wood to show through.

In a few places it is necessary to use an opaque color over top. This is the case where Steiner called for a lighter highlight color (like yellow) over top of a darker color like a blended blue and green. To accomplish this requires mixing in some of the white ink from the set, as the white is effectively opaque, and when tinted lends an opaque base to the color.

The project of making Eurythmy Figures requires several artistic choices.

The first one had to do with how to handle the sketches. Rudolf Steiner drew his sketches for the eurythmy figures freehand. This means that the lines, and especially the outlines, have a nice organic wavering form, and are not exactly straight. If you are cutting them with a bandsaw it would be hard to preserve the exact outline. But a laser cutter is precise to a fraction of a millimeter. So the artistic question is whether to straighten the outlines, or leave the rougher and more organic pencil lines exactly as they were.

I opted to leave the outlines exactly (to a fraction of a millimeter) as Rudolf Steiner had drawn them. It would not have been difficult to make the lines exactly straight, either using a ruler in the initial phase, or by using digital editing tools in the step before the file goes to the laser cutter. But my sensibility was that the forms felt more natural when you left the hand drawn lines as they were.

There is a somewhat different challenge with the shapes of the figures inside of the outline. Here you are working freehand with wet ink that dries quickly. How precisely is it even possible to follow Steiner’s inner lines? I did consider methods like a projector or various forms of carbon paper, but decided in the end to go with my own freehand line work.

I gave myself permission to take these liberties after looking carefully at multiple variations made by Steiner’s original collaborators. They too were working with these sketches Steiner had handed them, and they too were struggling with the various ways of implementing his ideas into a finished piece. By looking at how different many of these early figures were from each other—both in color and in form—I decided the proper approach would be to do my best the way the earlier artists had done their best. This ultimately means that each of my figures, while having exactly the same outline, is individual at the level of coloring.

Rudolf Steiner’s sketches for the Eurythmy Figures were done in pencil, with hatching indicating the areas to receive the indicated colors, and the colors written off on the side. There are two main challenges in translating this into a finished Eurythmy Figure. Hue and blending.

Hue: How many colors are there? The rainbow supposedly has seven. Your computer monitor claims to be able to show 24 billion separate hues. The paint section in the store has several hundred tints, each with its own creative name. Small libraries of books have been written on human color perception, as well as its changes over time. Homer’s description of the “wine dark sea” in the Odyssey has caused more than a few thinkers, including Steiner, to claim that the ancient Greeks were incapable of perceiving purple. In that hypothesis, it is not that there retinal receptors could not pick up the wavelength, but rather that their minds did not have a category separating dark blue from purple. There simply was not a word for it. Today we do have words for a far wider range of colors, but these likewise remain inadequate. Those who work professionally in the field have developed several separate systems to enable an objective description of a specific color, the best known for industrial purposes being the Pantone system. Each separate color gets a number assigned, and this number guarantees that each specific shade of blue or hue of purple will be reproduced exactly.

Such a specific system of color naming did not exist in Rudolf Steiner’s time. Instead the Eurythmy Figures call for “green” or “blue”. Where Steiner attempts to be more specific, he calls for “greenish-bluish” or “reddish purple”. In some places for a “soft blue tint”. But ultimately these prove to be extremely general indications. There are a wide range of greens, and many different shades of blue (cobalt, azure, sky, etc.). Which one is called for? In practice this ends up being an artistic choice. In looking over the early examples of Eurythymy Figures you can see the artists working out several different approaches. For this set I have done my best to balance my artistic sensibilities with Steiner’s indications. A lot of the choices have to do with the combinations. A purple that is set off against an orange might require a slightly different hue than a purple that is being combined with green.

I did do additional research trying to understand what the colors may have meant to Steiner. Along the way I found a fascinating book by a British historian that examines the use of color words in German literature over a 300 year period. This was both helpful and failed to provide any guidance. I learned a great length how the German word “lila”, which can mean purple or lilac or violet depending, has changed in its usage in German literature from the 17th to the early 20th centuries. But it still did not tell me what color Steiner wanted when he wrote “lila” on the sketch. Did he want a light lilac, or a violet hue, or a deep purple? Any of those colors could have been indicated.

Blending: The second problem comes with blending. It is almost immediately evident that Steiner was sketching his indications for the Eurythmy Figures using spiritual vision, and was not thinking as a graphic artist. This shows up in the very first figure, for the sound A. The color scheme calls for somewhat overlapping reddish-purple, greenish-bluish, and then a light red tint over that. It does not take much experience with color to realize that when you mix reddish-purple and greenish-bluish, you end up with a muddy brown. And adding a bit of light red is not going to make any appreciable difference. But that is exactly what the indications call for: layering greenish-bluish over reddish-purple and then finishing it off in some sections with light red. I spent quite a lot of time with different shades and dilutions of color until I got something that kind of worked. I took some solace in looking at attempts nearly 100 years earlier where other artists had struggled with exactly the same problem.

Thankfully not all 35 figures have this problem to quite the same degree, but it is something that comes up in most of them. In many cases the solution is to dilute the colors where they overlap and then to make them stronger where they stand alone. This allows the blended portion to have the same intensity as the unblended piece. Often, however, the third color, the “character” color, works better when it is opaque. Usually it highlights only a few small areas, so this works reasonably well. It is the “movement” and “feeling” colors that require careful blending.

I first started thinking about the Eurythmy figures a several years ago when a friend lamented that they were so hard to find in the US. I looked at several examples and wondered, How hard can it be to make them? Well, little did I know.

After thinking about it on and off for quite some time, I decided to go ahead and make a bunch. It made little sense to just do one, so I undertook to do 15 complete sets on the theory that some things are more easily done at scale. For source material I first got volume K26 from the German complete works, a folio of Steiner’s sketches for the Eurythmy Figures. Shortly thereafter volume K26a was released, a folio of photographs of early examples of the Eurythmy Figures, including some that are purportedly partially painted by Rudolf Steiner himself. This came with a helpful booklet with a bit of history behind the Eurythmy Figures and the early attempts.

Making the Eurythmy Figures as a practical project requires selecting the materials, cutting the wood, and then painting the figures. Each of these steps presented practical challenges. For making the wooden shapes I concluded that a laser cutter would be the most practical way to approach the task of creating dozens of identical figures. To set up the tool required hand drawing the outlines of all 35 figures by hand in black ink and then translating these to instructions the laser cutter could follow. I also had to source high-quality plywood and then experiment to get the right settings in order to cut all the way through the wood without unnecessarily scorching it. I eventually found a reliable source for the same type of high quality Baltic Birch plywood that Steiner and his collaborators used in the 1920s.

Painting the figures likewise required a lot of experimentation. I wanted an archival quality pigment that would not fade, that could be applied in semi-translucent layers, and that would allow the wood grain to show. I eventually settled on Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay India Inks, some applied full strength and many mixed and diluted to various degrees. Then for each figure I had to work out what the color indications meant and how to mix them properly.

The project ended up taking considerably more time than I had anticipated. In all I ended up working nearly 18 months on and off to get the first batch of 15 sets completed. That is 525 individual figures painted by hand. I am now able to offer sets for sale, as well as blanks for those who wish to try for themselves.

Daniel Hindes