Michael Siebenbrodt
The Bauhaus movement is one of the most significant cultural developments of the 20th century. Walter Gropius founded this institute of design in 1919; it was active first in Weimar, then in Dessau and Berlin. Several renowned architects of the time period served as directors of the school: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 to 1933. The works of the Bauhaus artists, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as those of the students and young faculty members, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Gunta Stölzl and Joost Schmidt, were greatly admired and aroused the interest of museums across the world. Bauhaus was founded to explore new aesthetic perspectives and creative teaching programmes for the education of architects, designers and artists for a post-war democratic society. The school’s syllabus featured a combination of creative training, basic artistic knowledge, workshop production, and learning to work as a team. Animated by an acute social awareness, the Bauhaus would soon combine its creativity with industrialisation and mass production, and conceive numerous products which were not only beautiful but useful, durable and affordable. In 1933 the Nazi closure of the Bauhaus triggered the emigration of many of its members, and thus the ideas produced there were spread worldwide. The design standards created by the Bauhaus are still observed in today’s architecture and design schools, as well as in general art classes. The products of the Bauhaus, such as Marcel Breuer’s well-known steel pipe furniture, became classic, inexpensive design standards. The Bauhaus buildings have made architectural history and now are classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.This book features an overview of the history of the Bauhaus, accompanied by numerous images, and sheds light on its evolution and connection with other movements.
