An influential school of arts and crafts founded in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1919. The aim was for artists and architects to work together to create a new unity in the arts. At first expressionist in style, the Bauhaus quickly championed the stark simplicity of functionalism. Students and teachers included Feininger, van Doesburg, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky, Klee, and Mies van der Rohe. The school was constantly troubled by opposition from local people and politicians, and by divisions amongst its own members. It moved to Dessau in 1925, but was closed by Hitler in 1933, many members living thereafter in the USA. A new director was appointed in 1987, and the renamed Bauhaus Dessau Foundation now contains a collection, studio, academy, and workshop.
For the British post-punk band, see Bauhaus (band).Bauhaus is the common term for the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and architecture school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933 and briefly in the United States from 1937-1938 and for the approach to design that it developed and taught.
The Bauhaus art school existed in four different cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932, Berlin from 1932 to 1933) and Chicago from 1937-1938, under four different architect-directors (Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 to 1933 and László Moholy-Nagy from 1937-1938). When Mies took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.
Context
The foundation of the Bauhaus occurred at a time of crisis and turmoil in Europe as a whole and particularly in Germany.
Politics
The conservative modernisation of The German Empire during the 1870s had maintained power in the hands of the aristocracy.
In 1917 in the midst of the carnage of the First World War, the Russian workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets seized power in Russia.
Elections were held on the January 19th, and the Weimar republic was established.
Art and architecture
Art nouveau (or Jugendstil in Germany) had broken the preoccupation with revivalist historical styles that had characterised the 19th century.
Two further influences upon the emergent architectural thinking of the time can be traced from the 1903 directorships of Hans Poelzig to the Applied Art School in Breslau and Peter Behrens to the Applied Art School in Dusseldorf.
The work of Peter Behrens for the German electrical company AEG attempted to bridge the widening gap between art and mass production.
A number of artists began to develop their own creative languages which relied increasingly on abstraction: the fauvists (c1905) such as Henri Matisse in France, Cubism developed by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso (c1908);
1903 Hans Poelzig - directorship of applied art school in Beslau. 1903 Peter Behrens - directorship of applied art school in Dussledorf. 1906 Wilhelm Ernst founds the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar (German:Grossherzogliche Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule) under Henry van de Velde and the Grand-Ducal Saxon Academy of fine arts (German:Grossherzogliche Sächsische Hochschule für Bildende Kunst).Expressionism
1914-1918 Discussions between Saxon state ministry and Fritz Mackensen head of the Grand-Ducal Saxon Academy of fine arts as to the relative importance in the teaching of fine and applied art. 1918 Arbeitsrat für Kunst and Bruno Taut and Expressionist architecture 1919 Gropius writes the pamphlet for 'Exhibition of unknown architects' -to go into buildings, endow them with fairy tales....and build in fantasy[sic] without regard for technical difficulty.(frampton p123)
Gropius argued for autonomy of applied arts, with a workshop-based education for both designers and craftsmen. 1919 Gropius becomes head of composite institution consisting of the Academy of Art and the School of Arts and Crafts.Dada
Arbeitrat fur Kunst
Constructivism
Education
1890 onwards Gestalt psychology - Über Gestaltqualitäten ("On Gestalt-qualities"). 1907 Maria Montessori school opens Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel Psychoanalysis 1893 Philosophy of Freedom, 1902 German branch of Theosophical Society, 1919 Waldorf education, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical societySociety
The Bauhaus aimed to teach the arts and crafts in tandem and to bridge the widening gulf between the art and industry.
1907 Deutscher WerkbundBehrens work for AEG forged new links between art and industry.
Mass production of consumer goods
Mechanisation - Industry
History of the Bauhaus
Weimar
The school was founded by Gropius at the conservative city of Weimar in 1919, as a merger of the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts (Grossherzogliche Kunstgewerbeschule) and the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts (Grossherzogliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst). His opening manifesto proclaimed:-
to create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artist.(frampton p123)
Most of the contents of the workshops had been sold off during World War I. The early intention was for the Bauhaus to be a combined architecture school, crafts school, and academy of the arts.
Gropius argued that a new period of history had begun with the end of the war. The Bauhaus issued a magazine called "Bauhaus" and a series of books called "Bauhausbücher".
Many believe that German reform in art education was critical for economic reasons.
Funding for the Bauhaus was initially provided by the Thuringian state parliament. The SPD, who had governed in Dessau for years, offered to establish the Bauhaus in the city.
After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a school of industrial design with teachers and staff less antagonistic to the conservative political regime remained in Weimar. This school was eventually known as the Technical University of Architecture and Civil Engineering and in 1996 changed its name to Bauhaus University Weimar.
Dessau
In 1927, the Bauhaus style and its most famous architects heavily influenced the exhibition "Die Wohnung" ("The Dwelling") organized by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart.
Berlin
Paul Schultze-Naumburg
Under increasing political pressure the Bauhaus was closed on the orders of the Nazi regime on April 11 1933. (See Degenerate art.)
USA
In 1937 László Moholy-Nagy was invited by the American Association of Arts and Industries to become the director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago. The new school used and developed the Bauhaus curriculum and employed some of the staff from the German schools, many of whom had left Germany due to the increasingly hostile political climate towards progressive art. Seven months later the school was reopened as the School of Design (renamed as the Institute of Design in 1944).
Architectural output
The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that the ultimate aim of all creative activity was building, the school wouldn't offer classes in architecture until 1927.
During the years under Gropius (1919–1927), he and his partner Adolf Meyer observed no real distinction between the output of his architectural office and the school. So the built output of Bauhaus architecture in these years is the output of Gropius: the Sommerfeld house in Berlin, the Otte house in Berlin, the Auerbach house in Jena, and the competition design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, which brought the school much attention. The definitive 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau is also attributed to Gropius.
In the two years under the outspoken Swiss Communist architect Hannes Meyer, the architectural focus shifted away from aesthetics and towards functionality. But there were major commissions: one by the city of Dessau for five tightly designed "Laubenganghäuser" (apartment buildings with balcony access), which are still in use today, and another for the headquarters of the Federal School of the German Trade Unions (ADGB) in Bernau bei Berlin.
And then Mies van der Rohe repudiated Meyer's politics, his supporters, and his architectural approach. Neither Mies nor his Bauhaus students saw any projects built during the 1930s.
The popular conception of the Bauhaus as the source of extensive Weimar-era working housing is not accurate. It was the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig and particularly Ernst May, as the city architects of Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt respectively, who are rightfully credited with the thousands of socially progressive housing units built in Weimar Germany.
Impact
The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States and Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled or were exiled by the Nazi regime.
Gropius, Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy re-assembled in England during the mid 1930s to live and work in the Isokon project before the war caught up to them. Moholy-Nagy also went to Chicago and founded the New Bauhaus school under the sponsorship of industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke.
Both Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together before their professional split in 1941.
One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology.
One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design.
The physical plant at Dessau survived the War and was operated as a design school with some architectural facilities by the Communist German Democratic Republic. After German reunification, a reorganized school continued in the same building, with no essential continuity with the Bauhaus under Gropius in the early 1920s .
In 1999 Bauhaus-Dessau College started to organize postgraduate programs with participants from all over the world.
American art schools have also rediscovered the Bauhaus school.
Many outstanding artists of their time were lecturers at Bauhaus:
| Anni Albers Josef Albers Marianne Brandt Marcel Breuer Lyonel Feininger Naum Gabo Ludwig Hilberseimer Johannes Itten Wassily Kandinsky Paul Klee | Gerhard Marcks László Moholy-Nagy Georg Muche Hinnerk Scheper Oskar Schlemmer Joost Schmidt Lothar Schreyer Naum Slutzky Gunta Stadler-Stölzl Ludwig Mies van der Rohe |
User Comments Add a comment…