Poster for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition by Joost Schmidt
“Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting."—Walter Gropius
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, by the young architect Walter Gropius, was part Modernist school of art and design and part dream factory. Its approach was a blend of practical work and theoretical teaching. Students were taught in workshops led by both craftsmen and artists and the curriculum included everything from fine art, typography, and graphic design to interior design and architecture.
Art historian Joseph Paul Cassar explores the importance and enduring influence of the Bauhaus.
April 8 Art and Technology: A New Unity
The Bauhaus emerged in response to the legacy of the Industrial Revolution as machines were overtaking the traditional functions of the artist and the craftsman. Although its early model was the medieval crafts guild, the school came to embrace the Arts and Crafts Movement, the work of William Morris and John Ruskin, and the idea of reuniting the arts and industry through design.
April 15 Origins and Aims
The aim of Bauhaus (German for “building house”) was to train craftsmen and fine artists on cooperative projects that combined many skills and disciplines in new ways. It was believed that bringing the fine and applied arts together would produce beautiful and beneficial designs for industrialized society.
April 22 The Teachers
Gropius recruited world-class talent to instruct in the Bauhaus workshops, including the painters Johannes Itten and Lyonel Feininger, and sculptor Gerhard Marcks. Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and Marcel Breuer also became part of Bauhaus faculty, among others.
April 29 The Bauhaus Legacy
Nazism put an end to Bauhaus in Germany. Key Bauhaus figures, including Gropius and the last director, Mies van der Rohe, emigrated to America to work and teach. The Bauhaus philosophy spread around the globe, manifested in the Independent Bauhaus Movement in Israel, and the New Bauhaus in Chicago and New York. Cassar offers an analysis of its new way of thinking a century later, and how its ideas still resonate today.
4 sessions
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