The Bauhaus 1 / 70

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GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / THE BAUHAUS 1 / 70

The Bauhaus

1 Art and Technology, A New Unity 3

2 The Bauhaus Workshops 13

3 Origins 26

4 Weimar 45

5 Dessau 57

6 Berlin 68

1919–1933 Art and Technology, A New Unity A German design school where ideas from all advanced art and design movements were explored, combined, and applied to the problems of functional design and machine production.

1919–1933 The Bauhaus Twentieth-century furniture, architecture, product design, and graphics were shaped by the work of its faculty and students, and a modern design aesthetic emerged.

MEGGS

1919–1933 The Bauhaus Ideas from all advanced art and design movements were explored, combined, and applied to the problems of functional design and machine production.

MEGGS

• The Arts & Crafts: Applied arts, craftsmanship, workshops, apprenticeship • Art Nouveau: Removal of ornament, application of form • Futurism: Typographic freedom • Dadaism: Wit, spontaneity, theoretical exploration • Constructivism: Design for the greater good • De Stijl: Reduction, simplification, refinement

1919–1933 The Bauhaus • The House of Construction • The School of Building • The State Home for Building

JOSEF LÁSZLÓ WALTER PAUL OSKAR ALBERS MOHOLY- NAGY GROPIUS KLEE SCHLEMMER

GEORG JOOST MARCEL LYONEL MUCHE SCHMIDT BREUER FEININGER

HINNERK HERBERT WASSILY GUNTA SCHEPER BAYER KANDINSKY STÖLZL

Weimar Dessau Berlin 1919–1925 1925–1932 1932–1933

1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933

Hannes Ludwig Mies Walter Gropius Meyer van der Rohe

1919–1933 The Bauhaus Workshops

1919–1930 Sculpture At the Bauhaus in Weimar the main activity of the workshops for stone and wood sculpture was to perform tasks for other workshops. In Dessau the two were merged into a single sculpture workshop.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten • Oskar Schlemmer • Josef Hartwig

1919–1933 Joinery Some of the items of furniture made in the joinery workshop at the Bauhaus now rank as design classics, contributing significantly to the prestige the Bauhaus still enjoys around the world.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten, 1919–1922 • Walter Gropius, 1922–1925 • Marcel Breuer, 1925–1928

1919–1933 Metal From 1923 the former gold, silver and copper forge in Weimar evolved into a design laboratory. It was here that Marianne Brandt and Wilhelm Wagenfeld created the Bauhaus lamp WA24 and the tea infuser.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten • László Moholy-Nagy • Alfred Arndt • Marianne Brandt

1919–1925 Ceramics The Bauhaus pottery workshop started out in Dornburg on the River Saale. In 1923 a technology leap replaced the potter’s wheel with ceramic casting and prototypes were made for serial production.

Masters and Teachers

• Gerhard Marcks • Max Krehan • Otto Lindig

1919–1925 Stained Glass Josef Albers designed his well-known windows for Haus Sommerfeld and the Grassi Museum in Leipzig in the stained glass workshop. It closed in 1925 due to a lack of orders.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten • Paul Klee • Josef Albers

1919–1925 Graphic Printshop The graphic printshop at the State Bauhaus in Weimar produced major portfolios of graphic works by Bauhaus masters. The portfolios were bound in the bookbinding workshop.

Masters and Teachers

• Walther Klemm, 1919–1921 • Lyonel Feininger, 1921–1925

1921–1929 Stagecraft The stagecraft workshop was headed first by Lothar Schreyer and from 1923 by Oskar Schlemmer. Schlemmer introduced his students to modern dance and had a lasting impact on stage activities at the Bauhaus.

Masters & Teachers

• Lothar Schreyer, 1921–1923 • Oskar Schlemmer, 1923–1929

1929–1933 Photography Versatile interdisciplinary experimentation with the medium of photography began early at the Bauhaus, but only in 1929 was a photography class established, led by photographer Walter Peterhans.

Masters and Teachers

• László Moholy-Nagy • Walter Peterhans

1925–1933 Printing and Advertising Workshop The workshop for printing and advertising was set up at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1925. In the early years it was headed by Herbert Bayer, and later by Joost Schmidt and Walter Peterhans.

Masters and Teachers

• Herbert Bayer • Joost Schmidt • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

1920–1933 Wall painting Students in the wall painting workshop designed and implemented many murals, reliefs and colour schemes. The most successful product from the workshop was the Bauhaus wallpaper produced from 1930.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten • Oskar Schlemmer • Wassily Kandinsky • Hinnerk Scheper • Alfred Arndt

1919–1933 Weaving The weaving workshop was one of the most successful and productive workshops at the Bauhaus, experimenting with both traditional craft techniques and industrial methods.

Masters and Teachers

• Johannes Itten • Georg Muche • Gunta Stölzl • Lilly Reich • Anni Albers • Otti Berger

1899–1925 Origins Prior to its industrial philosophy, the fundamental structure for the Bauhaus was modeled after the Deutcher Werkbund, an Arts & Crafts workshop in Weimar, Germany.

1899–1914 The Deutscher Werkbund • German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists • Arts & Crafts guild • Series of workshops • Joined craft and industry • Incluced Eliel Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, among others

1899–1914 The Deutscher Werkbund • Exhibition of 1914 • Cologne, Germany • Featured works by Henri van de Velde, Peter Behrens, and Walter Gropius • Scheduled to last from May–October • Closed in August in response to outbreak of WWI • Influenced the The Weimar Arts and Crafts School

1899–1914 Arbeitsrat für Kunst • Workers’ Council for Art • Founded in 1918 by Bruno Taut, architect • Championed the German Exrpressionist style

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School • Originally called the Weimar Saxon- Grand Ducal Art School • The building existed since 1860 in varying capacities • In 1904 occupied a building designed by Henry van de Velde • Reorganized in 1910 to join three other schools into one

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School • Modelled after the earlier Deutsche Werkbund • Stained glass, wood, and metal workshops • Medieval Bauhütte: master, journeyman, and apprentice

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School • Arts & Crafts origins • Unity of artists and craftsmen to build for the future • Expressionist leanings at turn of century • Utopian desire to create a new spiritual society

1910–1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School • Henry van de Velde, Director • Belgian Art Nouveau architect • Designed the building at the turn of the century • Built in two separate efforts: 1904 & 1911

1914 The Weimar Arts and Crafts School • Henry van de Velde, Director • Forced to resign in light of WWI • Returns to Belgium, 1914 • Closed duration of WWI • Van de Velde recommneds Walter Gropius, Hermann Obrist, and August Endell as successors • Four year delay by WWI

1883–1969 Walter Gropius • Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts merges with neighboring Weimar Academy of Fine Arts • Walter Gropius, architect, is appointed as next Director to succeed van de Velde in 1918

1883–1969 Walter Gropius • 3 year assistantship with Peter Behrens, 1907–1910 • Together they used modern materials like glass and steel in new ways • Gropius introduces to modernism to factory design

For the first time a complete facade is conceived in glass. The supporting piers are reduced to narrow mullions of brick.

NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

1883–1969 Walter Gropius • Factory design • Fagus factory in Berlin, 1911

... The corners are left without any support, yielding an unprecedented sense of openness and continuity between inside and out. ...

NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

... Another exceedingly important quality of Gropius’s building is that, thanks to the large expanses of clear glass, the usual hard separation of exterior and interior is annihilated.

NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, PIONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

The role of the walls becomes restricted to that of mere screens stretched between the upright columns of the framework to keep out rain, cold and noise.

WALTER GROPIUS

1919–1925 Weimar Gropius begins to shape the philosophy of the school. Expressionist origins slowly progress towards a more open, rational, and modern point of view.

1919 Das Staatliche Bauhaus Gropius’ goal is “to create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist.”

• Gropius renames the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts: Das Staatliche Bauhaus • “House of Construction” • Opens April 12, 1919 • Bauhaus seal is created • “A Unity of Art and Handicraft” • “Cathedral of Socialism”

1919 Walter Gropius The first Bauhaus Manifesto is published in German newspapers to demonstrate the reorganization of the school:

• Architecture School • Crafts School • Academy of Fine Arts • The cathedral becomes a symbol of the total work art, as well as an icon of the medieval model of creation. • Three beams of light • Architecture, scultpure, painting

The complete building is the ultimate aim of all the visual arts. Once the noblest function of the fine arts was to embellish buildings; they were indispensable components of great architecture...

WALTER GROPIUS, 1919

... Today the arts exist in isolation. … Architects, painters, and sculptors must learn anew the composite character of the building as an entity. … The artist is an exalted craftsman.

WALTER GROPIUS, 1919

...In rare moments of inspiration, transcending an artist’s conscious will, the grace of heaven may cause their work to blossom into art. But proficiency in their craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination.

WALTER GROPIUS, 1919

1919 The Weimar Faculty Recognizing the common roots of both the fine and applied visual arts, Gropius sought a new unity of art and technology as he enlisted a generation of artists in a struggle to solve problems of visual design created by industrialism.

MEGGS

• Johannes Itten, 1919 • Lyonel Feininger, 1919 • Gerhard Marcks, 1919 • Oskar Schlemmer, 1920 • Paul Klee, 1921 • Wassily Kandinsky, 1922

1923 Ideology changes • Johannes Itten is fired over differences with Gropius • László Moholy Nagy and Josef Albers assume leadership of the Vorkurs (Foundational Course) • Slogan “A Unity of Art and Handicraft” becomes “Art and Technology, a New Unity”

1923 Ideology changes • Industrial- and mass- production come into focus • Traditional craftmanship aspect is deemphasized • Gropius commissions new symbol for the school

1923–25 Ideology changes • Gropius is forced to hold an exhibition of Bauhaus work • An era of political conflict begins • Geometric and machine forms • Galvanizes the maturing ideology • The Bauhaus is forced out of Weimar “Echoes of cubism, constructivism, and De Stijl provide evidence that the Bauhaus became a vessel in which diverse movements were melded into new design approaches.”

MEGGS

1925–1932 Dessau Gropius and the other instructors agree to resign when their contracts expire at the end of 1924. Working with the mayor of Dessau, they set up shop in temporary facilities at the beginning of 1925.

1926 Starting over • A new building complex was designed and occupied in the fall of 1926 • Gropius designs the centerpiece of the campus, a new monument to modernist ideals • The curriculum was reorganized

Production Gropius brings Bauhaus design work to the masses

• The Bauhaus Corporation • Sale of workshop prototypes to industry • Labor contracts, income stream • Sold to the German public • Perpetuates ideology

1928 Changes at the Dessau location • Walter Gropius resigns his position as Bauhaus Director • In response to incessant political scrutiny • Leadership changes in two rapid bursts

© Kevin Woodland, 2020 (left) Hannes Meyer as a young architecture student in Switzerland, 1913; (right) Hannes Meyer the year he becomes Director of the Bauhaus, 1928 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / THE ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT 68 / 70

1932–1933 Berlin The final phase of the Bauhaus. Massive political pressure catalyzes changes in leadership and ideology.