The Bauhaus, 1919–1933 | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Works of Art (10) Essay The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living. The Bauhaus combined elements of both fine arts and design education. The curriculum commenced with a preliminary course that immersed the students, who came from a diverse range of social and educational backgrounds, in the study of materials, color theory, and formal relationships in preparation for more specialized studies.

This preliminary course was often taught by visual artists, including Paul Klee ( 1987.455.16 ), Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944), and Josef Albers ( 59.160 ), among others. Following their immersion in Bauhaus theory, students entered specialized workshops, which included metalworking, cabinetmaking, weaving, pottery, typography, and wall painting. Although Gropius’ initial aim was a unification of the arts through craft , aspects of this approach proved financially impractical. While maintaining the emphasis on craft, he repositioned the goals of the Bauhaus in 1923, stressing the importance of designing for mass production. It was at this time that the school adopted the slogan “Art into Industry.” In 1925, the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau, where Gropius designed a new building to house the school. This building contained many features that later became hallmarks of modernist architecture, including steel-frame construction, a glass curtain wall, and an asymmetrical, pinwheel plan, throughout which Gropius distributed studio, classroom, and administrative space for maximum efficiency and spatial logic.

The cabinetmaking workshop was one of the most popular at the Bauhaus. Under the direction of Marcel Breuer ( 1983.366 ) from 1924 to 1928, this studio reconceived the very essence of furniture, often seeking to dematerialize conventional forms such as chairs to their minimal existence. Breuer theorized that eventually chairs would become obsolete, replaced by supportive columns or air. Inspired by the extruded steel tubes of his bicycle, he experimented with metal furniture, ultimately creating lightweight, mass-producible metal chairs. Some of these chairs were deployed in the theater of the Dessau building. The textile workshop, especially under the direction of designer and weaver Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983), created abstract textiles suitable for use in Bauhaus environments. Students studied color theory and design as well as the technical aspects of weaving. Stölzl encouraged experimentation with unorthodox materials, including cellophane, fiberglass, and metal. Fabrics from the weaving workshop were commercially successful, providing vital and much needed funds to the Bauhaus.

The studio’s textiles, along with architectural wall painting, adorned the interiors of Bauhaus buildings, providing polychromatic yet abstract visual interest to these somewhat severe spaces. While the weaving studio was primarily comprised of women, this was in part due to the fact that they were discouraged from participating in other areas. The workshop trained a number of prominent textile artists, including Anni Albers (1899–1994), who continued to create and write about modernist textiles throughout her life. Metalworking was another popular workshop at the Bauhaus and, along with the cabinetmaking studio, was the most successful in developing design prototypes for mass production. In this studio, designers such as Marianne Brandt ( 2000.63a-c ), Wilhelm Wagenfeld ( 1986.412.1-16 ), and Christian Dell (1893–1974) created beautiful, modern items such as lighting fixtures and tableware. Occasionally, these objects were used in the Bauhaus campus itself; light fixtures designed in the metalwork shop illuminated the Bauhaus building and some faculty housing.

Brandt was the first woman to attend the metalworking studio, and replaced László Moholy-Nagy ( 1987.1100.158 ) as studio director in 1928. Many of her designs became iconic expressions of the Bauhaus aesthetic. Her sculptural and geometric silver and ebony teapot ( 2000.63a-c ), while never mass-produced, reflects both the influence of her mentor, Moholy-Nagy, and the Bauhaus emphasis on industrial forms. It was designed with careful attention to functionality and ease of use, from the nondrip spout to the heat-resistant ebony handle. The typography workshop, while not initially a priority of the Bauhaus, became increasingly important under figures like Moholy-Nagy and the graphic designer Herbert Bayer ( 2001.392 ). At the Bauhaus, typography was conceived as both an empirical means of communication and an artistic expression, with visual clarity stressed above all. Concurrently, typography became increasingly connected to corporate identity and advertising.

The promotional materials prepared for the Bauhaus at the workshop, with their use of sans serif typefaces and the incorporation of photography as a key graphic element, served as visual symbols of the avant-garde institution. Gropius stepped down as director of the Bauhaus in 1928, succeeded by the architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954). Meyer maintained the emphasis on mass-producible design and eliminated parts of the curriculum he felt were overly formalist in nature. Additionally, he stressed the social function of architecture and design, favoring concern for the public good rather than private luxury. Advertising and photography continued to gain prominence under his leadership. Under pressure from an increasingly right-wing municipal government, Meyer resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1930. He was replaced by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( 1980.351 ). Mies once again reconfigured the curriculum, with an increased emphasis on architecture. Lily Reich (1885–1947), who collaborated with Mies on a number of his private commissions, assumed control of the new interior design department. Other departments included weaving, photography, the fine arts, and building.

The increasingly unstable political situation in Germany, combined with the perilous financial condition of the Bauhaus, caused Mies to relocate the school to Berlin in 1930, where it operated on a reduced scale. He ultimately shuttered the Bauhaus in 1933. During the turbulent and often dangerous years of World War II, many of the key figures of the Bauhaus emigrated to the United States, where their work and their teaching philosophies influenced generations of young architects and designers. Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius taught at Harvard. Josef Albers and his wife Anni Albers taught at Black Mountain College, and later Josef taught at Yale. Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. Mies van der Rohe designed the campus and taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Alexandra Griffith Winton Bauhaus Most Important Art and Artists | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Walter Gropius Walter Gropius The German architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school of art and design in Weimar Germany.

Along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer's career touched nearly every aspect of three-dimensional design, from tiny utensils to the biggest buildings. Famously part of the Bauhaus school in Germany, Breuer was an influential Hungarian-born modernist that went on to teach many architects of the next generation. Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer was an Austrian designer, best known for his graphic design and his connection to the Bauhaus. He was a student under Wassily Kandinsky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy for four years before he was hired by Walter Gropius to direct printing and advertising. He invented the minimalist typeface for which the Bauhaus became known. Marianne Brandt Marianne Brandt Marianne Brandt was a German designer who studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar and later taught its metal workshop. Her designs for household objects are considered the precursor to modern industrial design. She also created photomontages that explored the role of women in the complicated society of Weimar Germany.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter, photographer and teacher at the Bauhaus School. Moholy-Nagy was influential in promoting the Bauhaus's multi- and mixed-media approaches to art, advocating for the integration of technological and industrial design elements. Josef Albers Josef Albers Josef Albers was a German-born American painter and teacher. Celebrated as a geometric abstractionist and influential instructor at Black Mountain College, Albers directly influenced such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was a movement that swept through the decorative arts and architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Generating enthusiasts throughout Europe, it was aimed at modernizing design and escaping the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. It drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms with more angular contours. Suprematism Suprematism Suprematism, the invention of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was one of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art.

Inspired by a desire to experiment with the language of abstract form, and to isolate art's barest essentials, its artists produced austere abstractions that seemed almost mystical. It was an important influence on Constructivism. Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Malevich was a Russian modernist painter and theorist who founded Suprematism. Along with his painting Black Square, his mature works feature simple geometric shapes on blank backgrounds. De Stijl De Stijl Founded in the Netherlands in 1917, De Stijl was an avant-garde dedicated to isolating a single visual style that would be appropriate to all aspects of modern life, from art to design to architecture. Taking its name from a periodical, its most famous practitioners were Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, whose mature art employed geometric blocks of primary colors and vertical and horizontal lines. Gerrit Rietveld Gerrit Rietveld Gerrit Rietveld was a Dutch architect and furniture designer, and a principal figure of De Stijl, having created a number of the movement's signature works.

Included among these are his Red Blue Chair (1923) and the Rietveld-Schröder House (1924), employing the use of primary colors and clean straight lines for which De Stijl is known. Rietveld's work would also prove to have a distinct influence on the Bauhaus-inspired "International Style" of architecture that developed subsequent to De Stijl. 1000+ images about Bauhaus Art on Pinterest | Bauhaus, Bauhaus art and Walter gropius Forward Bauhaus was an architectural school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. Pioneers of the International Style and introduces the concept of "form follows function", ie building form follows function contained in the building. Bauhaus had a major influence on the world of modern architecture and modern design. Which later evolved in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Today, we bring you a set 30 Bauhaus-inspired posters. Bauhaus poster design… See More The Bauhaus and the contradictions of artistic utopia - artnet Magazine artnet Magazine What does the Bauhaus mean to us, today?

This, more than anything else, is the question provoked by the recent "Bauhaus" show at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the various other exhibitions and symposia that marked the 90th anniversary of the legendary art school last year. In Artforum, K. Michael Hays answered the question by saying that the Bauhaus represented a belief in the unifying power of geometry, something we no longer can share. In the January Art in America, Joan Ockman replies that the school may indeed still be relevant -- but only the Expressionist early period, so different than what we normally associate with the term "Bauhaus." The Bauhaus was more than just an idea, of course, it was an actual institution. That institutionï¿½s historical background figures in each of these accounts -- to a point. In general, however, what strikes me is how bloodless most descriptions of the Bauhaus are. History appears more or less the way it did at the MoMA show, as a timeline outside the galleries; that is, as ornament, not as integral to understanding the meaning of the artwork.

To truly recover the spark of relevance of Bauhaus practice, you need to thoroughly dig into what happened in Germany in the years 1919-1933 -- to put the history back into art history, so to speak. Four giant facts that loomed over the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919: * World War I, 1914-1918. The War killed some two million Germans, and left Germanyï¿½s economy -- then the worldï¿½s second largest -- in shambles. The conflict had begun in 1914 with substantial working-class support, on all sides. It ended with German soldiers in revolt against their officers, and a deep hatred of the leaders who had initiated the hostilities. Many Bauhaus students were veterans of the war. Walter Gropius , its first director, served on the Western Front, was wounded, and won two Iron Crosses. * The Russian Revolution of 1917.

Growing out of war fatigue, a successful Marxist-led revolution on Germanyï¿½s doorstep overthrew a much-loathed Czar and replaced him, for heroic moments, with historyï¿½s most far-ranging experiment in worker-run government (soon to be strangled by civil war and reaction). The Russian example ignited a wide-spread enthusiasm for social experiment and revolutionary politics, in Germany and elsewhere. * The German Revolution of 1918. In November, the discredited German Kaiser fled the country; the German Empire became the German Republic. Inspired by the October Revolution, the next months saw power pass over into a woolly collection of grassroots workers and soldiers councils across the country. Authority was soon consolidated, however, in a National Assembly dominated by the disastrously centrist German Social Democratic Party (SPD), socialist in name, but in practice bent on placating a still-monarchist right-wing.

The workers council movement, however, persisted -- and was wildly influential with artists; Gropius became head of the architect-led Working Council on the Arts in February 1919, which issued an "Appeal to the Artists of All Countries." * Months of civil war between a still-monarchist right and a socialist-inspired left in 1918-1919. The police and army were so penetrated by radical agitation that the SPD government fell back on the "Freikorps," irregulars formed from the rump of the German officer corps, to maintain order. In January 1919, a rebellion in Berlin, the "Spartacus Uprising," ended with the murder of the leftï¿½s most popular speaker, Karl Liebknecht, and its most capable thinker, Rosa Luxemburg. In February, Freikorps troops used artillery and mass arrests to crush the workers movement in Bremen, on the northwest coast, and the Ruhr, in the west, then went into central Germany to liquidate various organs of popular power. In March, there was another upheaval in Berlin.

In April, Bavaria declared itself an independent "Soviet Republic" under workers rule, and was violently put down (becoming subsequently the cradle of Nazism). These were the cheerful headlines that formed the backdrop for the birth of the Bauhaus. Imagine: Walter Gropius issued the Bauhaus Manifesto in April 1919, when the hope in the new ultra-democratic structures was still running hot, when the post-war economic chaos was acute, when class war was an inescapable fact -- Weimar, where the Bauhaus was to have its home, had recently been sealed off for a radius of 10 kilometers by the government, to secure it against the left! Gropiusï¿½ call to students is not an explicitly political document, but read in context it echoes with the utopian hopes of the era. The Bauhausï¿½ founding appeal is not the clarion call to industrial design that one might expect, given the schoolï¿½s legacy -- just the opposite, in fact: It denounces "designers and decorators," and declares "Art is not a profession." The manifesto got its topical relevance by decrying the "isolation" of the contemporary artist.

"The complete building is the final aim of the visual arts," the opening lines trumpet. "Their noblest function was once the decoration of buildings. Today they exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen." The intense interest generated by such a holistic art program only makes sense when understood against a background of social disintegration; the fact that the manifesto took a stand against "salon art" and for "cooperative" practice meant it harmonized with the contemporary revolutionary rhetoric. In later days, Bauhaus recruits would universally remember the woodcut that illustrated the manifesto -- a shining, Expressionistic church by Lyonel Feininger -- as the "cathedral of socialism." In his most explicit nod to Marxist language, Gropius declares, "Let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist." The irreconcilable struggle between capital and labor, right and left, was thus displaced onto an opposition between fine art and handicraft, substantially easier to resolve.

This doctrine found practical outlet in the cooperative teaching of the early Bauhaus, with each workshop co-taught by a "technical master," who taught practical skills, and a "form master," i.e. an artist. The Bauhaus was always an elite phenomenon -- at its height, it drew about 200 students a term. But with its promise of a mission for the arts that responded to the hardships of the day, Gropius attracted some of the brightest minds, as both students and staff: Josef Albers , Marcel Breuer , Herbert Bayer , Marianne Brandt , Johannes Itten , Wassily Kandinsky , Paul Klee , Oskar Schlemmer , Lothar Schreyer , Gunta Stolzl . In a country that traditionally revered academic credentials, only Itten had any prior teaching experience among the first instructors. In scholarly accounts, it is customary to dwell on the naivetï¿½ of early Bauhaus pedagogy, such as Kandinskyï¿½s classes where students were tasked with uncovering supposedly natural harmonies between shapes and colors.

These are often framed as part of the "original sin" of modernism, with its supposedly foolhardy hunger for universals (this is the tack the Hal Foster takes in the MoMA catalogue). But such were the times; as in all politically turbulent periods -- think of the ï¿½60s -- people turned to all kinds of strange spiritual solutions to the problems around them. Thus, the free-thinking Bauhaus proved a natural point of attraction for members of the "Wandervogel" back-to-nature movement; Alfred Arndt recalls tramping into Weimar in 1921, running into a one-time fellow traveler ensconced at the Bauhaus and falling under the schoolï¿½s spell. The most pronounced spiritual ideology, however, flourished around Itten, the priestly artist whom Gropius recruited to teach the schoolï¿½s famous Vorkurs foundation course. In his class, students learned to get in touch with their creative selves, mediating on the "inner forms" of Old Master paintings, and making junk constructions intended to put them in tune with the logic of materials.

Itten was a disciple of the mystical doctrine known as "Mazdaznan," involving complete purging of the self of all negative thoughts. A large circle of students was indoctrinated in these new-agey practices, with Itten leading them in group breathing exercises, fasts, and even the use of a "needle machine" that punctured the skin to release impurities. The early Bauhaus kitchen prepared food according to Mazdaznan doctrines (when there was food at all; students often went to bed hungry). So it was that the preppy, functionalist Gropius found himself presiding over a sort of hippy-dippy esthetic commune, awash in exotic and esoteric ideologies. "Boys had long hair, girls short skirts," remembers Tut Schlemmer. "No collars or stockings were worn, which was shocking and extravagant then." The students played in clamorous, experimental bands. They created lantern festivals and parades for which they crafted exquisitely impractical art kites. In general, they scandalized the population of provincial Weimar.

The state of Thuringia, where Weimar was situated, was not even fully formed until 1920; it was wracked by political confrontations between left and right. Fractious politics meant that Gropiusï¿½ experiment had to constantly justify itself before town leaders, while at the same time facing the unstinting, militant hostility of the eraï¿½s own version of the tea-party movement. In 1919, locals had already branded the Bauhaus as "Spartacist-Jewish." In early 1920, a newspaper announcement trumpeted the following: "Men and women of Weimar! Our old and famous Art School is in danger!" A "public demonstration" against the Bauhaus was called for January 22, 1920. In March 1920, an attempt at a Freikorps-led coup in Berlin -- the so-called "Kapp Putsch" -- galvanized the German left. A nationwide general strike shut down the country, thwarting the coup leaders. In Weimar, nine workers lost their lives defending the Republic.

Bauhaus students attended their burial in force with colorfully painted signs and leftist slogans, much to the dismay of Gropius, who was anxious to maintain a neutral profile. And yet, later that year, Gropius himself contributed the winning design for a tribute to the slain workers, Monument to the March Dead, an abstract concrete lightning bolt -- a landmark of Expressionist architecture that may well itself have finalized the idea of avant-garde-as-Bolshevik in the minds of Weimarï¿½s fuming burghers. The Bauhaus Idea always represented a compromise between conflicting tendencies; a fanciful, utopian spirit was balanced against a more practical-minded, forward-looking character. Gropius owed his position as director to the fact that his persona seemed naturally to mediate these conflicting tendencies -- the previous director of the Arts and Crafts School, the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde , selected Gropius as replacement because he was a proponent of modern industrial architecture, but also opposed the more extreme ideology that completely subordinated art to design. However, as his schoolï¿½s situation became more embattled, the tensions between these two poles sharpened.

In 1922, as condition of renewed funding of the Bauhaus, the Weimar government insisted that the school produce a show to "give account of" its accomplishments. It was under these pressures that the Bauhaus began to make its turn towards industrial design and mass production in earnest, away from the pageantry of Expressionism and Arts and Crafts. It was the extreme situation that resulted in the sharpness of the detour, which was really a repudiation of the entire spirit of the early Bauhaus: The post-war crisis was deepening; 1923 would be remembered as the "Year of Hunger." The post-war inflation, which had been bad enough, became hyper-inflation -- money ceased to have any meaning from day to day; by the end of the year, the government was issuing two-trillion-mark notes. The all-important Bauhaus showcase of 1923 would coincide with the apogee of this crisis.

"Art and Technology -- A New Unity" was the new slogan that Gropius hit upon to win over the town; "Exactly what we didnï¿½t want," Feininger told Gerhard Marcks upon seeing the slogan plastered in the Weimar train station for the Bauhaus exhibition. Yet Feininger understood the pragmatic logic of the shift: "One thing is sure -- unless we can produce ï¿½resultsï¿½ to show the outside world and win over the ï¿½industrialistsï¿½, the future of the Bauhaus looks very bleak indeed," he wrote to his wife Julia. "We now have to aim at earnings -- at sales and mass production! But thatï¿½s anathema to all of us and a serious obstacle to the development process." Itten, with his spiritualist outlook, was replaced by the Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy , a leftist himself of a Constructivist bent who had fled Hungary after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, that countryï¿½s own short-lived experiment in workersï¿½ government, in 1919.

Walter Gropiusï¿½ 1923 essay, "The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus," offers a window into his thinking at this juncture. It is a transitional document, representing the architectï¿½s attempt to reconcile the original rhetoric of the school with a new program that might appeal to backers. It maintains a vaguely left-ish rhetoric, proclaiming that as long as the "machine-economy. . . remains an end in itself rather than a means of freeing the intellect from the burden of mechanical labor, the individual will remain enslaved and society will remain disordered." But this is immediately followed by a statement -- incredible given the economic circumstances -- that "[t]he solution depends on a change in the individualï¿½s attitude toward his work, not on the betterment of his outward circumstances, and the acceptance of this principal is of decisive importance for new creative work." As one perceptive critic stated at the time, "A blunter rejection of Marxism and kindred Utopias is inconceivable." It was too late, however, to save the Bauhaus at Weimar.

Economic hardship, combined with a French occupation of the Ruhr over German non-payment of reparations, was ideal for the growth of cultural reaction. The Nazis had their first big electoral success in Thuringia; the SPD government that the Bauhaus relied on for support was deposed. The schoolï¿½s plight became something of a cause cï¿½lï¿½bre, with luminaries like Peter Behrens , Albert Einstein, Mies van der Rohe , Oskar Kokoschka and Arnold Schonberg signing a letter decrying the assault on the school. But by the end of 1924, the writing was on the wall. And yet, by the time it had to pack up shop, the German currencyï¿½s value had been stabilized by massive American loans (the "Dawes Plan"), economic activity began slowly to perk up in Germany, and the publicity of the forced closing had proved salutary. Different localities bid against one another to host a relocated Bauhaus. Dessau, an industrial village that was home to the Junkers aircraft manufacturing plant, won out.

It was in Dessau, under slightly improved economic circumstances, that Gropius was to build his famous Bauhaus building, and the classic ideology of the school was crystallized under Maholy-Nagyï¿½s spell. The co-teaching scheme was dropped. A Bauhaus Corporation was founded to market products, with wallpaper eventually being its most successful money-earner. The wood, stained glass, bookbinding and pottery workshops all passed into history. The first actual architectural workshop was eventually established. The communal fraternization between students and teachers of the early Bauhaus was replaced with glorified "work study," with pupils serving as cheap labor to help with product lines. Still, there is a simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic tone to Bauhaus design ideology that is the result of a nexus of factors very specific to the mid-ï¿½20s Germany. The tremendously influential Russian avant-garde had left the indelible impression that left-wing art meant orienting on the factory; industrial design could thus serve as channel for the optimism of hopeful Bauhaus youth (in point of fact, market relations had already been restored in Russia under the New Economic Policy, and the USSR was beginning its long, tragic slide towards bureaucracy and terror).

On the other hand, Germany had been saved by American capital, and "Americanism" -- thrift, efficiency, business -- became fashionable. Herbert Bayerï¿½s plans for fantastical urban pop-up architecture, clearly inspired by Soviet propaganda kiosks, but intended to feature advertising for various consumer products, stand as a symbol of this odd conjuncture, when the quintessential capitalist use of art -- product and graphic design -- could be considered radically socialist. The Bauhaus was founded with a utopian program for architecture in a wrecked country where little actual building was being done. With the stabilization, the demand for professional labor picked up considerably. In 1928, Gropius decided to leave the school he had founded to continue his career as an architect, putting in his place Hannes Meyer , a Swiss veteran of the communal architecture movement, who would carry forward the torch of progressive design -- though somewhat less diplomatically than Gropius (Maholy-Nagy couldnï¿½t stand him, and resigned).ï¿½ And yet, for both the Bauhaus and for German society in general, the contradictions of the immediate post-war era had not been resolved, but only covered over with a big pile of money from the United States.

In 1929, the U.S.ï¿½s own economic contradictions erupted into the open, as the orgy of speculation of the ï¿½20s came undone in the Great Crash. The U.S. needed its loans back. Crisis returned in Germany with a vengeance. Unemployment skyrocketed. A thoroughly embittered and disoriented German electorate turned towards Hitlerï¿½s National Socialists. The rest is well known. As John Willett says, with the rise of the Nazis, "the entire modern movement in Germany was not merely doomed but damned." The compromise between free-thinking avant-garde ideology and big industry on which the Dessau Bauhaus was based fell apart. Hannes Meyerï¿½s socialist sympathies caused him to be forced out as director of the Bauhaus, to be replaced by the relatively apolitical Mies van der Rohe. Mies would try to hold the famous institution together as it was hounded out of Dessau in 1932 by the Nazis, reviving it in makeshift quarters in Berlin, before it was finally closed as Hitler came to power in 1933.

But it mattered little, by this point, how the Bauhaus positioned itself: To the Nazis, says Willett, "any form of association with the SPD or the November Revolution was ï¿½Marxist,ï¿½ just as any innovatory ideas in the arts fell under the heading of Art- or Cultural-ï¿½Bolshevism.ï¿½" * * * That is the story of the Bauhaus. What, at last, is the interest in returning to this history today? The Bauhaus was formed in the shadow of a potential Marxist revolution; its founding statement offered the school as solution to many of the same problems that also led to the popularity of revolutionary ideology -- the chaos left in the wake of an imperialist war, social disintegration, human alienation. Instead of political revolution, however, the original Bauhaus adherents looked to the Arts and Crafts tradition, itself inspired by the older utopian socialism of people like Owen and Fourier, who believed that they could dream up elegantly designed communal schemes, islands of unalienated labor in a capitalist world.

In fact, utopian thinking was one of the three great traditions of European thought that Marx had sought to synthesize (the other two being German idealism and English political economy). Such schemes were a genuine inspiration, but if you read the Communist Manifesto, you find "utopian socialism" critiqued. For these reformers, Marx and Engels write, "Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an organization of society especially contrived by these inventors." Closer to hand in the Germany of 1919, the martyred Rosa Luxemburg had developed similar objections in her pamphlet Reform or Revolution, with respect to the vogue for workerï¿½s co-operative organizations in Germany: The great flaw of communal schemes was that they tried to find a way around the reality of class struggle; without confronting the actual divisions of society, inevitably, utopian schemes either remain dilettantish and marginal, or they adapt themselves to the needs of the wealthy, or they are crushed. In essence, the history of the Bauhaus is the history of an institution passing inexorably through these three stages.

It always remained something of a progressive phenomenon, in spirit; there is a pivot point that allowed the school to swing round from the early mystical attachment to cooperative living to Maholy-Nagyï¿½s ringing assertion that "Constructivism is the socialism of vision." But what these different propositions have in common, despite opposed esthetics, is that they offer artistic solutions to political dilemmas, conceiving social problems as problems of bad esthetics. They themselves could not, therefore, put into place the conditions that might realize their promises: of course the extravagant, impractical community experiments of the early "Expressionist" Bauhaus were doomed; of course the ideas of the later, design-oriented Bauhaus were fated to become a tool for big business, sucking them of all their soul. Without profound political change, there was no other path open. Looking back mournfully, much later, Gropius acknowledged that his project was always hobbled by its historical circumstances: "about ninety percent of the unprecedented efforts made by all participants in this undertaking went into countering national and local hostility, and only ten percent remained for actual creative work." To recover the spark of relevance of the Bauhaus today, you have to rediscover the tension that underlay it.

Against those who dismiss the Bauhaus, you must recognize that it was not just a school dedicated to creating attractive objects; its production is shot through with the luminosity of political passion. But against those who idealize avant-garde utopias, it is also important to see that this was displaced energy, responding to the right questions but unable to provide the answers to them on its own. In this sense, the ultimate lesson of the Bauhaus for today is that art cannot afford to turn away from history. BEN DAVIS is associate editor of Artnet Magazine. He can be reached at 1000+ images about STYLE | BAUHAUS MOVEMENT on Pinterest | Walter gropius, Bauhaus and Bauhaus architecture Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas STYLE | BAUHAUS MOVEMENT Bauhaus is a German expression meaning house for building. In 1919, the economy in Germany was collapsing after a crushing war. To help rebuild the country and form a new social order, Bauhaus was born. Its design uses the principles of Classical architecture, in its purest form, free of ornamentation of any kind. Colors are white, gray, beige, or black.

Floor plans are open, roof lines are flat and furniture is functional, further demonstrating Mies’s concepts of “skin & bones” architecture. 145 Pins40.45k Followers Walter Gropius facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Walter Gropius COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Walter Gropius The German-American architect, educator, and designer Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was director of the famed Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to 1928 and occupied the chair of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1938 to 1952. Walter Gropius was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883. Although he studied architecture in Berlin and Munich (1903-1907), he received no degree. He then went to work in Berlin for Peter Behrens, one of several German architects who was influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and who attempted to go further by adapting good design to machine production. In 1910 Gropius set up practice with Adolf Meyer.

They designed the Fagus Works in Alfeld an der Leine (1911) and the office building at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914), using a combination of masonry and steel construction, from which, in some areas, the external glass sheathing was hung. The plan of the Cologne building was axially designed in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but the major influence was predominantly that of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose "prairie houses" were widely known in Europe through the 1910 and 1911 publications of Ernst Wasmuth in Berlin. Gropius and Meyer were influenced by Wright's style especially in the horizontality and the wide overhanging eaves, but also in the symmetry, the corner pavilions, and the whole spirit of Wright's concept. World War I interrupted their architectural practice, and thereafter they designed only one project prior to Meyer's death in 1924:the unsuccessful entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922.

The Bauhaus During the war Gropius was invited to become the director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts and the Saxon Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar, and he took up his duties at war's end. He combined the two schools into the Staatliches Bauhaus (State Building House) in 1919. The aim of the Bauhaus was a "unity of art and technology" to give artistic direction to industry, which was as lacking in 1919 as in the mid-19th century, when the Arts and Crafts movement began. The greatness of Gropius as an educator was that he did not put forward any dogmatic policies, but rather he acted as a balance between the rational, representative, and physical on the one hand and the spiritual, esthetic, and humanitarian on the other. An artistic community of prima donnas is difficult to coordinate, but Gropius acted as choreographer and exacted the best from his faculty, from the mysticism of Johannes Itten to the Marxist socialism of Hannes Meyer.

When right-wing criticism forced the Bauhaus to leave Weimar in 1925, Gropius designed the structure for the new Bauhaus in Dessau, one of his finest works, which embodied a new concept of architectural space. When criticism mounted there against him as director in 1928, he resigned rather than allow the criticism to spread from him as leader to the whole institution. (Nazism and the Bauhaus stood for diametrically opposing viewpoints, and in 1933 under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the school, which had moved to Berlin, was forced to close.) Gropius practiced in Berlin from 1928 to 1934, experimenting with prefabricated housing in his Toerten housing development in Dessau (1926) and dwellings at the Werkbund Exhibition (1927). He went to England in 1934, where he worked with E. Maxwell Fry until 1937, designing mainly individual houses, but also Impington College, Cambridgeshire. This structure partially influenced the post-World War II school design program in Britain.

Works in America When Gropius went to the United States in 1937, he collaborated with Marcel Breuer, a former pupil, on individual and group housing, including a house for himself at Lincoln, Mass. (1937). Gropius held the chair of architecture at Harvard from 1938 to 1952, a period of his life from the age of 55 to 69, when most architects would have been designing their major works. This was due to his intense commitment to the educational process. "I have been 'nobody's baby' during just those years of middle life which normally bring a man to the apex of his career, " Gropius admitted, when he received the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal in 1959. Gropius had, however, established The Architects' Collaborative (TAC), a group-oriented practice, in 1946, and he retired from Harvard in 1952 to devote his full attention to the practice of architecture.

TAC and Gropius designed the Harvard University Graduate Center (1949-1950); executed a project for the Boston Back Bay Center (1953), which was not carried out; and designed the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1960) and Baghdad University in Iraq (begun 1962 but incomplete as of 1971). Gropius also designed locomotives and railroad sleeping cars (1913-1914), the Adler automobile (1930), and a host of everyday products. He believed in "the common citizenship of all creative work." Further Reading Works on Gropius include Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius: Work and Teamwork (1954); Gilbert Herbert, The Synthetic Vision of Walter Gropius (1959); and J. M. Fitch, Walter Gropius (1960). Studies of the Bauhaus are L. Hirshfeld-Mack, The Bauhaus (1963), and Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus (1969), which is the most detailed and comprehensive study.

For bibliographies of Gropius's works see American Association of Architectural Bibliographers, Walter Gropius: A Bibliography, prepared by Caroline Shillaber (1965), and William B. O'Neal, Walter Gropius (1966). Additional Sources The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Walter Gropius (väl´tər grō´pēŏŏs), 1883–1969, German-American architect, one of the leaders of modern functional architecture. In Germany his Fagus factory buildings (1910–11) at Alfeld, with their glass walls, metal spandrels, and discerning use of purely industrial features, were among the most advanced works in Europe. After World War I, Gropius became (1918) director of the Weimar School of Art, reorganizing it as the Bauhaus . It was moved in 1925 to Dessau. The complete set of new buildings for it, which Gropius designed (1926), remains one of his finest achievements.

He built the Staattheater at Jena (1923), some experimental houses at Stuttgart (1927), and designed residences, workers' dwellings, and industrial buildings. Driven out by the Nazis, he practiced (1934–37) in London with Maxwell Fry and in 1937 emigrated to America, where he headed the school of architecture at Harvard until 1952. His influence on the dissemination of functional architectural theory and the rise of the International style was immense. Practicing his principles of cooperative design, Gropius worked with a group of young architects on the design of the Harvard graduate center. He continued his architectural activity with this group, the Architects Collaborative (TAC), in such works as the U.S. embassy at Athens, the Univ. of Baghdad (1961), and the Grand Central City building, New York City (1963). His writings include The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (tr. 1935) and Scope of World Architecture (1955). See studies by S. Giedion (1954), J. M. Fitch (1960), and M.

Franciscono (1971). Cite this article WEIMAR GERMANY: Why art flourished and democracy perished WEIMAR GERMANY: Why art flourished and democracy perished Why art flourished and democracy perished by Jeffry Babb News Weekly, March 31, 2012 Weimar Germany saw an intense flowering of almost every form of creativity, yet this vibrant culture ran head first into Nazi Germany, which set out to destroy it. The Weimar Republic was born amid chaos in the provincial city of Weimar in 1919 and died largely unmourned when the Nazis seized power in 1933. It gained a reputation for vacillation, incompetence and weakness in the face of oppression by the victors of the Great War. It was burdened with the taint of betrayal — that the brave soldiers at the front, who after all were still on French and Belgium soil at the end of the war — had been “stabbed in the back” by the civilian government. Amazingly, the reparations demanded from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles were only finally paid off in 2010.

Three invalids (c.1930), by German artist Heinrich Hoerle (1895–1936). Private collection, courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria. At first instance, the Weimar Republic would seem to be an unpromising environment for creativity. The three years of hyperinflation between 1921 and 1924 bankrupted the middle class and instilled an enduring fear of inflation. Tales are told of currency speculators who would drink their winnings every night because by morning their speculative gains would be worthless. A loaf of bread that cost one mark in 1921 could be bought for “only” 100 million marks in 1924. The streets were inhabited by impoverished veterans with horrific wounds and prostitutes who traded in the drug of loneliness. The Freikorps, a paramilitary militia formed of veterans that fought sometimes for the state and sometimes against it, dealt harshly with those with whom it was displeased. Why then was the Weimar Republic so productive in ideas and art? Because its flowering, like a hothouse plant, was so intense and short-lived, it has often been overlooked in Anglophone countries.

Berlin has frequently been overshadowed by its continental rival, Paris. Paris had “the Lost Generation” — Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and other litterateurs drinking their books away. It had Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Cubists — Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. But with the revival of Germany as Europe’s cultural hub as well as its financier, many would argue that Paris’s pre-eminent reputation as the “between the wars” cultural capital of Europe is a triumph of publicity over substance. Berlin was the centre, but new creative movements sprang up all over Germany. The depth and influence of Weimar culture was on show in Sydney and Melbourne recently in one of the most engrossing exhibitions in recent years, entitled “The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art, 1910–37”. Surprisingly, half the exhibits are from Australian collections.

Of the painting which lends it name to the exhibition, guest curator Jacqueline Stecker writes: “Painted during a period of intense political and intellectual polarisation, The Mad Square by Felix Nussbaum can be seen as a satirisation of the collapse of society during the years of the Weimar Republic and a forewarning of the cataclysm that was to ensue.” Among the artistic movements which flourished in the Weimar period were Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism and New Objectivity. Of all the artistic and creative movements that thrived in the Weimar period, the one that has had the most influence on everyday life is Bauhaus. Or, as Tom Wolfe put it, “From Bauhaus to Our House.” To understand the profound influence Bauhaus has had on architecture and design, you have only to look around you. Almost every postwar skyscraper you see in any city in Australia is pure Bauhaus. Almost every kitchen utensil you use is influenced by Bauhaus design principles. The ubiquitous steel tubing chairs are pure Bauhaus. Bauhaus was essentially a design studio that worked from first principles. The founder, Walter Gropius, was an architect, but in the first instance Bauhaus did not teach architecture.

Bauhaus was not always a winner. In fact, it inflicted some horrible buildings on the world, including what the Americans call “projects” that did so much to criminalise and pauperise the less well-off, particularly inner city African-Americans. The whole Weimar creative enterprise was about modernism. Modernism came late to Germany. Under Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck, the Germans gained pensions, but at the cost of their freedom. The first democratic ruler of Germany was Prince Max of Baden, whose short-lived government attempted unsuccessfully to save Germany from chaos after the fighting ceased in 1918. The underlying theme of the modernist project — that humans are moral beings who have the power to create, improve and reshape their environment through experimentation, scientific knowledge and technology — had suffered a near fatal blow in the blood-soaked trenches, where science aided, rather than hindered, the slaughter. The last blow for modernism was the Degenerate Art exhibition, held in Munich in 1937. Hitler’s offensive against the art of the Weimar Republic was intended to show the public that art that wasn’t Aryan was immoral and corrupt.

Art was certainly intended to be revolutionary, as artists aimed to overthrow rather than enlighten. The interwar flowering of German art was dead. ART/WRITE - Kathe Kollwitz - The University of Arizona Museum of Art and Archive of Visual Arts Kollwitz, Kathe, Weberzug (Weavers on the March), 1897 Museum Purchase with Funds Provided By the Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Fund Etching, 8 3/5″ x 12″ © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Kollwitz, Kathe, Die Freiwilligen (the Volunteers), 1923 Museum Purchase with Funds Provided By the Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Fund Woodcut, 13 7/10″ x 19″ © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 1.

Biography “But some day a new ideal will arise and there will be an end to all wars…People will have to work hard for that new state of things, but they will achieve it” –Käthe Kollwitz Born Käthe Ida Schmidt in 1867 in Konigsberg, Prussia(pre- German Empire), Käthe was born to parents who supported and encouraged her training in art. Käthe originally pursued training in painting, but while studying art in Munich at the Women’s School of Art from 1888-1889, and influenced by the German artist Max Klinger, she discovered printmaking and drawing as her true medium and passion. An independent woman, intensely devoted to her art, she postponed marriage until 1891, when she married Karl Kollwitz to whom she had been engaged to for seven years. Printmaking allowed Kollwitz to work in an expressive style, using a bold contrast of black and white to create works of social and political commentary which were cheap to produce in multiples, allowing Kollwitz’s work to reach more people.

The 1897 etching, Weberzug (The Weavers) was one of six prints created by Kollwitz after seeing the performance of the play, Die Weber (The Weavers), by Gerhart Hauptmann. The play told the story of peasant weavers from the Russian town of Silesia who revolted in 1844 because of their low wages and horrible living conditions. Hauptmann’s play was a direct visual and narrative source for the people, conditions and events depicted in her series of prints. Kollwitz’s work often responds to social and political conditions in a personal way. The woodcut print Die Freiwilligen (The Volunteers), one of six prints in the series The War (1923), was a response to the death of Kollwitz and Karl’s son, who died in WW I. Swept up in the German nationalist patriotism of 1914, their youngest son, Peter volunteered to join the German army. The only print in the series that shows soldiers is The Volunteers, where the figure of death leads a troop of young volunteer soldiers, the leading boy being Kollwitz’s son, Peter.

This image displays the extremely personal loss and devastation of war that was experienced by Kollwitz the artist and Kollwitz the mother. In 1919, Kollwitz was the first woman elected to The Prussian Academy of the Arts. In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and after repeated threats by the Nazi Gestapo, Kollwitz was forced to resign from the Academy that same year. She would never exhibit her work again. WWII would bring more tragedy and hardship to Kollwitz when and her grandson Peter was killed in battle in 1943. That same year Kollwitz would escape the bombing of Berlin just six months before her apartment was reduced to rubble by ally bombs, destroying a good portion of her work. Käthe Kollwitz passed away on April 22, 1945, dying just weeks before the end of WW II. Bibliography Käthe Kollwitz. The Volunteers (Die Freiwilligen) (plate 2) from War (Krieg). (1921-22, published 1923). (n.d.). MoMA.org.

Retrieved February 12, 2013, from number=13&template_id=1&sort_order=1 Kearns, M. (1976). Käthe Kollwitz: Woman and artist.New York: The Feminist Press. 2. History Despite a floundering economy and a psychologically devastated population after WW I, the Weimar Republic in Germany was a time of great innovation and experimentation in art, architecture, cinema and the sciences. Germany was an artistic breeding ground for the avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, Expressionism, Die Brücke, and the Bauhaus. “Avant-garde” was a military term used to describe the body of troops who advanced first, a fitting description for the artists who took risks and stretched the concepts of art in the early 20th century Europe and especially Germany. The art world that Kollwitz worked in was impacted by two major expressionist movements. The German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) formed Die Brücke (The Bridge) in 1905 as an art movement meant to return art to imaginary to its origins.

Bold contrasting colors and abstracted, simple forms dominate in the works of Kirchner and other Die Brücke artists. Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter who moved to Munich to study art because of research that was being done there on the effects of color and form on the human brain. In 1911, he formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Rider Rider), a group devoted to the power of color. The Bauhaus was an art and design school formed by the Walter Gropius in 1919, where prominent artists like Paul Klee, Josef Albers, and Vasily Kandinsky were instructors. The Bauhaus received strong political opposition under the Weimer Republic, but was allowed to stay open until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and the Nazi party mounted a hostile campaign against modern art. Hitler despised the avant-garde and forced the closing of the Bauhaus in 1933 and soon after, many of its instructors immigrated to the United States.

In 1937, Nazi leadership mounted an exhibit of banned works called “The Degenerate Art” where works by modern artists, like Kirchner were hung with contemptuous labels, such as “an insult to German womanhood”. Hitler intended to erase all traces of modern art from Germany by inflaming public opinions against modern art. Timeline: Germany and Modern Art in Europe 1887- Käthe Kollwitz creates series of prints based on the political play, Die Weber (The Weavers). 1889- Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch) paints famous Impressionist work The Starry Night. 1890 – Growing workers’ movement culminates in founding of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). 1907- Pablo Picasso (Spanish) paints Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a major example of Cubism. 1911- Vasily Kandinsky organizes Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). 1914-1918 – World War I

Question: Which art movement was originally formed by Walter Gropius in 1918 in Weimar?
Answer: Bauhaus