Xanti Schawinsky (1904-1979) was a master of improvisation. Whether in the field of set design, as a photographer, or as an artistic creator of exhibition buildings and large-scale photomontages, his surprising ideas accompanied him from the Bauhaus in Dessau, to Black Mountain College, and then to New York University. While his late works are now well known through exhibitions and publications, his early work remained almost undiscovered. New documents from the estate - letters from Walter Gropius, autobiographical notes and a collection of numerous photographs from the city archives in Magdeburg - permit a more authentic view of this protagonist of the Bauhaus in Dessau.