1900 Haag am Hausruch
1985 Montecito/USA

At the age of 19 Herbert Bayer began an apprenticeship at the architect and designer Georg Schmidthammer's bureau in Linz, where his first typographic works came into existence. Since 1921 he worked as assistant of the architect Joef Emmanuel Margold at the artist's colony in Darmstadt. The same year he enrolled at the Bauhaus in Weimar and attended Johannes Itten's preliminary class and afterwards the workshop for mural painting, which was taught by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1925 he completed the training passing the trade test. Bayer was appointed director of the newly arranged workshop for printing and advertisement at the Bauhaus in Dessau, which also produced its own printings. In 1928 Bayer left the Bauhaus to attend increasingly to his own artistic work and moved to Berlin. There he worked as a commercial artist and artistic director of the advertising agency Studio Dorland. During his time in his Berlin he also attended to the organisation of exhibitions, painting as well as photography and was Art Director of the journal ‚Vogue', Paris. In 1938 he emigrated to the USA, where he organised the exhibition ‚Bauhaus 1919-1928' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the very same year. In 1946 the artist settled in Aspen/Colorado and worked as a painter, graphic artist, architect and landscape designer. Further he was artistic advisor for various companies and institutions, et al. for the ‚Container Corporation of America', for the ‚Atlantic Richfield Company', worked as a design advisor for the culture centre Aspen and was a member of the art council of the information bureau of the United States of America. In 1974 the artist relocated to Montecito in California, where he died in 1985. Herbert Bayer received several awards and honours, et al. the honorary doctor of the Technische Hochschule Graz, the ‚Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst', the ‚Ambassador's Award for Excellence', London and the ‚Kulturpreis für Fotographie', Cologne.