The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points

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The Bauhaus

 

• The architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in 1919, and it became the center of modern design in Germany in the 20s. It moved first to Weimar, then to Dessau and finally to Berlin, until it was closed in 1933 by the Nazis due to its left ideology. Once exiled, the artist Moholy-Nagy opened a new school of design in Chicago, considered as the New Bauhaus.
• The fundamental idea of the Bauhaus is the subordination of design —we also speak of architectural design— to function. A design is “beautiful” when it rationally fulfills a function. One of the principles established since its foundation is “form follows function.”
• This new idea of a “functional” aesthetics was intended to be incorporated into people’s everyday life, at home and in everyday objects, from the design of a house or of a juicer to magazine design. That is why the students’ training was comprehensive: they received lessons in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphic and industrial design, and participated in very diverse workshops such as carpentry, bookbinding and textile production.
• In accordance with all this, art should respond to the needs of society and put crafts at the same level. Gropius proposed to establish “…a new brotherhood of artisans, free of that arrogance that divides social classes and that seeks to erect an insurmountable barrier between artisans and artists.”
• The importance of the school resides primarily in the areas of design and architecture. Although painting is in the background, amazing painters taught there, such as Klee and Kandinsky. Much of the written theory they wrote is from that time. And although there is no a specific “Bauhaus style” in painting, some elements that conform the spirit of the school such as simplicity, abstraction, primary colors or geometry can be found.

 

Representative painters: Feininger, Itten, Klee, Schlemmer, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky.

 

Image: Yellow-red-blue (1925). Kandinsky.

 

Recommended links:

Fundamental Painters of the Bauhaus.

Kandinsky and the Return to Russia.

Kandinsky and the Biomorphic Abstraction.

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: Surrealism.

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: Abstract Expressionism.

When does Modern Art Start?

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