In a fleeting fourteen year period, sandwiched between two world wars, Germany’s Bauhaus school of art and design changed the face of modernity. With utopian ideals for the future, the school developed a
pioneering fusion of fine art, craftsmanship, and technology
to be applied across painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre, and installation.
As much an intense personal community as a publicly minded collective, the Bauhaus was first founded by
Walter Gropius (1883–1969)
, and counted
Josef and Anni Albers
,
Wassily Kandinsky
Paul Klee
Oskar Schlemmer
Gunta Stölzl
Marianne Brandt
and
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
among its members. Between its three successive locations in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, the school fostered
charismatic and creative exchange
between teachers and students, all varied in their artistic styles and preferences, but united in their idealism and their interest in a “total” work of art across different practices and media.
This book celebrates the adventurous innovation of the Bauhaus movement, both as a
trailblazer in the development of modernism
, and as a
paradigm of art education
, where an all—encompassing freedom of creative expression and cutting—edge ideas led to functional and beautiful creations.