Bauhaus

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Bauhaus. A school of art and design founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 and closed by the Nazis in 1933 after moving successively to Dessau (1925) and Berlin (1932); although it had such a short life it was the most famous art school of the 20th century, playing key roles in establishing the relationship between design and industrial techniques and in breaking down the hierarchy that had previously divided ‘fine’ from ‘applied’ arts. The Bauhaus was created when Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar in 1919 and united them in one; they were the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) and the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst (Institute of Fine Arts). He gave his new school the name Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar (Weimar State ‘Building House’), coining himself the word ‘Bauhaus’ (an inversion of ‘Hausbau’—house construction). His prospectus formulated three main aims for the school: first, to unite the arts so that painters, sculptors, and craftsmen could in future embark on cooperative projects, combining all their skills harmoniously; secondly, to raise the status of the crafts to that enjoyed by the fine arts; and thirdly, to establish ‘constant contact with the leaders of the crafts and industries of the country’ (an important factor if the school were to survive in a country that was in economic chaos after the war).

All students had to take a six-month ‘preliminary course’ (Vorkurs) in which they studied the principles of form and colour, were acquainted with various materials, and were encouraged to develop their creativity. After that they moved on to workshop training in the field of their choice. Gropius brought together a remarkable collection of teachers at the Bauhaus. The first head of the preliminary course was Johannes Itten, and when he left in 1923 he was succeeded by László Moholy-Nagy, who replaced Itten's rather metaphysical approach with an austerely rational one. The other teachers included some illustrious painters, most notably Kandinsky and Klee. Several students went on to become teachers at the school, among them Josef Albers. In 1924 right-wingers gained power in the provincial elections and cut funding to the Bauhaus, which consequently moved to Dessau the following year; it was housed in a group of new buildings designed by Gropius. The school had been involved in architectural commissions from the beginning, but it was only in 1927 that an architectural department was established, with the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) as its first professor. When Gropius resigned in 1928 to devote himself to his own practice he named Meyer as his successor. It was an unpopular choice with the staff, as Meyer was a Marxist and instituted a sociological approach that changed the whole tone of the school, with politics occupying an important place in the curriculum.

In 1930 Meyer was forced to resign and was replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. Mies tried to rid the Bauhaus of its political associations and thereby make it a less easy target for its right-wing opponents, but in 1932 the Dessau parliament closed the school. In an attempt to keep it alive Mies rented a disused factory in Berlin and reopened the Bauhaus there as a private enterprise, but it was closed by the Nazis in April 1933, soon after Hitler assumed power. In its last few years the Bauhaus was dominated by architecture, but it produced a great range of goods, with many of them (furniture, textiles, and electric light fittings in particular) being adopted for large-scale manufacture. They were highly varied in appearance, but the style that is thought typical of the Bauhaus was severe, geometric, and undecorated.

The Bauhaus published a journal (Bauhaus, 1926–31) and a series of books, and its ideas were spread also by the emigration of many of its teachers before and during the Second World War. It has had an enormous influence on art education in the Western world and on visual creativity in general: ‘The look of the modern environment is unthinkable without it. It left an indelible mark on activities as varied as photography and newspaper design…[and] achieved a language of design liberated from the historicism of the previous hundred years’ (Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, 1984). After the Second World War Dessau became part of East Germany and the Bauhaus buildings were left derelict. In 1976 the school was faithfully restored for the 50th anniversary of its opening in Dessau, and after the reunification of Germany in 1990 it was reopened as a design institution.

Bauhaus , artists' collective and school of art and architecture in Germany (1919–33). The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of classic arts with the study of crafts. In practice, a team of architects, artists, and master craftsmen conducted hands-on workshops in such areas as industrial design, sculpture, architecture, cabinetmaking, metalwork, painting, printmaking, photography, ceramics, and weaving. Students were also trained in the basics of color, form, and material. Philosophically, the school was built on the idea that design did not merely reflect society, but could actually help to improve it.

Founded at Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus was headed by Walter Gropius who conceived of it as a way to combine beauty and simplicity, utility and mass production. The faculty included Paul Klee , Lyonel Feininger , Wassily Kandinsky , László Moholy-Nagy , Marcel Breuer , and Josef and Anni Albers . The Bauhaus teaching plan insisted on functional craftsmanship in every field, with a concentration on the industrial problems of mechanical mass production. The school sometimes sold a line of products, which was mainly produced by the unpaid labor of the student body (about 150 individuals). Bauhaus style was characterized by economy of method, a severe geometry of form, and design that took into account the nature of the materials employed. The school's concepts aroused vigorous opposition from right-wing politicians and academicians.

In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to the more friendly atmosphere of Dessau, where Gropius designed special buildings to house the various departments. This was also the year that one of the Bauhaus's most successful products, Breuer's tubular steel and leather chair, was created. Gropius resigned in 1928, and leadership passed to the architect Hannes Meyer . He in turn was replaced in 1930 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , who in an effort to save the Bauhaus made a number of conservative changes. Nonetheless, in the summer of 1932 opposition to the school had increased to such an extent that the city of Dessau withdrew its support. The school was then moved to Berlin, where the faculty endeavored to carry on their ideas, but in 1933 the Nazi government closed the school entirely.

The Bauhaus ideas, enveloping design in architecture, furniture, weaving, and typography, among others, had by this time found wide acclaim in many parts of the world and especially in the United States. Gropius himself went to the United States and taught at Harvard, where he exercised considerable influence. Josef and Anni Albers also emigrated to the United States, where they brought the Bauhaus philosophy to Yale. The Chicago Institute of Design, founded by Moholy-Nagy, most completely carried on the teaching plan of the Bauhaus. In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art , founded in 1929, was organized according to Bauhaus departmental structure, similarly included a wide variety of media, and followed Bauhaus principles in its approach to design.

Bibliography: See W. Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (rev. ed. 1955); H. M. Wingler, The Bauhaus, ed. by J. Stein (1969); M. Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus (1971); E. S. Hochman, Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism (1997); B. Bergdoll et al., Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (MOMA museum catalog, 2009); N. Fox Weber, The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism (2009); U. Müller, Bauhaus Women: Art, Handicraft, Design (2009); P. Oswalt, ed., Bauhaus Conflicts, 1919–2009 (2010).

Bauhaus a school of applied arts established by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 and noted for its refined functionalist approach to architecture and industrial design. The socialist principles on which Bauhaus ideas rested incurred the hostility of the Nazis and, after moving to Berlin in 1932, the school was closed in 1933.