Bauhaus

The Bauhaus is one of the most famous and influential of all art, design and architecture schools. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus moved in 1925 to Dessau, where the new Bauhaus building as well as the Masters' houses were built in 1925/26. Political pressure forced the Bauhaus school to move to Berlin in 1932, where it remained until it was closed down permanently in 1933. Walter Gropius (1883-1969), founder-director of the Bauhaus, came up with a concept in 1919 for merging the Weimar Arts and Crafts School with the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste [Institute of Fine Arts]. Walter Gropius intended the State Bauhaus to be a co-operative undertaking in which no distinction was made between artists and artisans. At the Bauhaus the fields of architecture, fine art, the decorative and applied arts and the performing arts were to be united. "The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! [...] Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to crafts! [...] The artist is an artisan raised to a higher power," wrote Walter Gropius in his Bauhaus Manifesto. Moreover, the Bauhaus was to function as a consultancy for industry, business and crafts. This intention as stated matches the aims of the Deutscher Werkbund, established in 1907. Walter Gropius would remain a member of it until 1933. From the outset Walter Gropius succeeded in attracting distinguished artists, including Johannes Itten, Gerhard Marcks, Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, to teach at the Bauhaus. The influence exerted by the Bauhaus on art, architecture, design and commercial art was enormous. A Bauhaus style notable for a clear and functional formal language, which is universally equated with "Modernism" became established. From the art historical standpoint, however, this is problematic since the work of instructors and pupils at the Bauhaus should not be viewed as an isolated phenomenon but rather as embedded in the international context even over the longer term. Hence it belongs to the context associated with such terms as Functionalism, Classical Modernism, New Objectivity, the International Style and New Building.

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