Bauhaus History
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The Bauhaus, which translates as building houses, was established to
bring unity to the disciplines of art and design. Walter Gropius, the
school's first director, viewed construction as an important social and
intellectual endeavor and this sentiment permeated much of the early
teaching at the school.
Although there have been other great schools in the history of design -
notably the Cranbrook Academy of Art and The Chicago Institute of
Design, both in the United States - none has matched the importance and
impact achieved by the Bauhaus.
In 1919 the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimiar
merged with the Weimar Academy of Fine Art, with architect Walter
Gropius appointed director. He renamed the school Bauhaus' and
appointed new staff including the artist Paul Klee and designer Oskar
Schlemmer. Over time, the staff of the Bauhaus crane to include many of
the most important designers of the twentieth-century, including Mies
van der Rohe and Läszlö Moholy-Nagy (who went on to found the Chicago
Institute of Design), as well as artists such as Josef Albers and
Wassily Kandinsky. Other influential designers, inctuding Marcel
Breuer, Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt and Wilhelm Wagenfeld, started as
students here before taking up teaching posts.
Many significant pieces of design work were created at the Bauhaus.
These include Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair, which was revolutionary in
its use of tubular steel, Willielm Wagenfeld's Bauhaus table lamp - a
timeless classic - and Mariatine Brandt's geometric metalware. Many
pieces are produced under license today. Gropius clashed with Swiss
artist Johannes Itten, whose views were at odds with his more rational
approach to design. After Itten's departure in December 1922, Gropius
was free to take a more modern, constructivist approach.
The 1923 student exhibition reflected this, featuring a number of
important designs including Gerrit Rierveld's Red Blue Chair of 1918 to
1923 and graphics incorporating the New Typography inspired by De Stijl
and Russian constructivism respectively. The school also became more
egalitarian, freeing women from the pottery and textiles workshops they
had previously been restricted to. The Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925,
after the Social-Democrat government that funded the Bauhaus in Weimar
lost power to the Nazis. Gropius built a new building, based on highly
rational, prefabricated structural elements, heralding a move away from
the school's emphasis on craft, and towards industrial functionalism.
Although the school enjoyed a number of successful years there, the
rise of Nazism put pressure on the Bauhaus: it was seen as un-German,
and in 1928 Gropius resigned.
Despite the attempts of his successors, Hannes Meyer and Mies van der
Rohe, to keep the school going, the Bauhaus was dissolved on 19 July
1933. Many of the Bauhaus luminaries emigrated to the United States to
escape persecution by the Nazis. Gropius became professor of
architecture at Harvard in 1937, where Breuer also taught. In 1938, a
retrospective of Bauhaus design was held at the Museum of Modern Art
(MOMA), New York, which reinforced the school as the most important
design institution of the twentieth century.
