Dessau Bauhaus school.
picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bauhaus.JPG
I’m going to talk about the Bauhaus as it ties in quite nicely with my summer project. Though the Bauhaus’s relationship with German Expression is much disputed. I believe it must have had an undeniable influence on them as they were joined by Wassily Kandinsky a member of the Der Blaue Reiter one of the two groups of German Expressionism. The Bauhaus was set up in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. It was the coming together of the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. This joining of the fine arts and the applied arts was much inspired by William Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement with wanted to combine and reinforce the importance of both form and function in art and design. Gropius would be joined by artists and designers such as Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks and would have visits form the De Stijl arstist Theo Van Doesburg and Constructivist artist and architect El Lissitzky. Gropius would be followed by Hannes Meyer in 1928 and Meyer would be followed by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe in 1930 as heads of the Bauhaus. Despite only running for 14 years.
On White II by Wassily Kandinsky 1923. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kandinsky_white.jpg
The Bauhaus’s influence spread widely throughout the western world due to the fact that many of its members emigrated after its forced closure in 1933 by the Nazis. The Nazis presence and disapproval of the Bauhaus and its ideas was felt very early on its short flourishing. Weimar had been and ideal situation for the Bauhaus as, it was where Germany’s new democracy was laid out, hence the Weimar republic, and the state government of Thuringia (where Weimar was situated) was until 1924 held by the social democrats. But in 1924 the NSDAP (Nazi party) gained control of the Thuringia state government and promptly but the staff of the Bauhaus on six month contracts and cut their funding in half. This caused the Bauhaus’s move to Dessau, more problems arose as the school fought not to labelled as a hot-house of the Bolshevism that the right feared so greatly. Though Hannes Meyer the new head of the Bauhaus at this point was slightly more towards the left, he didn’t want the school to become politicised. As support for the NSDAP grew, it spread to Dessau prompting the schools move to Berlin where they remained for their last ten months before closing in 1933. The Bauhaus was labelled as Degenerate Art and ‘un – German’ for all its Communist and Jewish ties. Yet despite it short life, Bauhaus is still influential today.
Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919 – 1923 by Herbert Bayers. picture from :http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2001.392
Red/Green Architecture , yellow/violet gradation by Paul Klee, 1922. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Green_Architecture_yellow_violet_gradation_by_Paul_Klee.jpeg
Its influence on modernist architecture was great but so was its art and its experimentation in typography and colour theory. Herbert Bayers and Laszlo Moholy Nagy did much work with experimental typography it. Bold text laid out in geometric formats was a big departure from the norm. It may not have always be successful in that it was not always functional. In that it was hard to read but it made and still makes an impact on the viewer. Colour theory was also important to the artists of the Bauhaus, Itten, Feininger and Kandinsky can be seen as examples of this. They are described as Expressionists but they sought to find a scientific theory behind the use and the feel of colours and shapes and there relationships. You can take a Kandinsky colour test here :
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/bauhaus/Main.html
Farbkreis by Johannes Itten. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Farbkreis_Itten_1961.png
The Bauhaus aim was to do what Morris had attempted all those years ago to create a “new guild of craftsmen, without class snobbery.” Walter Gropius, Bauhaus pamphlet, 1919. Germany was a new country of sorts with new ideas and had been greatly changed by WWI and was still recovering from its effects. The Bauhaus ‘s modernism wanted to bring together art and design, form and function in order to better both fields and so that they could learn from each-other. The Bauhaus system is what most contemporary art colleges have been modelled. That is a pretty good legacy for such a short-lived movement that faced so much adversity.
References and Links to webpages that helped me write this post :
WINTON, A, G. The Bauhaus 1919 – 1933. Available at :http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bauhaus. Available at : http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/56418/Bauhaus
MOMA. Bauhaus 1919 – 1933. Available at : http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/bauhaus/Main.html
Bauhaus online. Walter Gropius Bio. Available at : http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/walter-gropius
Bauhaus Online. Available at : http://bauhaus-online.de/en
“new guild of craftsmen, without class snobbery.” Walter Gropius, Bauhaus pamphlet, 1919 from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
All of the above links were accessed on the 21.11.13.
robynglendinning 
