How We Celebrate International Women's Day in Bauhausland
How we celebrate International Women’s Day in BauhausLand Women in the Bauhaus movement: Discover who they were and what they did When an exhibition by Bauhaus artist Anni Albers opened in London recently, art critics gave the show five stars. Albers’ textiles, wall-hangings and “pictorial weavings” were a revelation. But she was not the only female artist in the Bauhaus. Now, as the world marks the 100th birthday of this revolutionary design movement, the contributions of its women designers are in the spot- light. In BauhausLand (the German federal states of Thuringia and Saxony- Anhalt), women, such as Albers, Gertrud Arndt and Marianne Brandt are being celebrated. And, a couple of hours to the north, Berlin, another Bauhaus hotspot, has declared International Women's Day (March 8) to be an official public holiday. Anni Albers: Master of Textiles When Walter Gropius created the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919, every- one was welcome “without regard to age or sex.” In fact, more women than men applied! Anni Albers studied weaving and went on to be a brilliant and influential textile designer. After fleeing Germany, she based herself at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, USA. Gunta Stölzl: Designer, teacher and producer Albers had studied under Gunta Stölzl. She was the head of the Bauhaus weaving department and one of only six women in the 45-strong faculty. Stölzl transformed her students into a full-on, professional, industrial design unit. For example, they designed and wove the blankets for the beds in Dessau’s stu- dent dorm. The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has a fine collection of Stölzl’s textiles.
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