the bauhaus
the school, 1919 to 1933: what happened, who was there, what they made, and what it left behind.
the school in one paragraph
The Bauhaus was a German school of art, craft and design that ran for fourteen years, from 1919 to 1933, in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, under three directors. It began as an attempt to reunite art with craft and ended as the model for design education and modern design everywhere. Its teachers were some of the century's best painters; its students made the chairs, lamps, textiles and typefaces that still look modern; and when the National Socialists closed it, its people carried the method to London, Chicago, New York, Tel Aviv and Ulm.
fourteen years
Walter Gropius merges the city's academy of fine art with its school of arts and crafts, and publishes a four page manifesto with Lyonel Feininger's woodcut of a cathedral on the cover. The aim: to bring architecture, painting, sculpture and the crafts together in one building, taught by artists and craftsmen side by side. Every workshop gets two masters, one for form and one for the craft.
Johannes Itten runs the compulsory first term: material studies, contrast, rhythm, color. Paul Klee arrives in 1921, Wassily Kandinsky in 1922, Oskar Schlemmer in 1920 for the stage and sculpture. Theo van Doesburg of De Stijl holds his own course in Weimar in 1922, outside the school and arguing for geometry against Itten's expressionism. The argument is won by geometry.
Pressed by the state to show results, the school stages its first exhibition under the slogan art and technology, a new unity. The experimental Haus am Horn is built and furnished by the workshops; Joost Schmidt's poster sets the diagonal style; Kandinsky's questionnaire pairs the three forms with the three colors; Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet, first staged in Stuttgart in 1922, is performed. László Moholy-Nagy replaces Itten and turns the preliminary course toward construction.
The Thuringian government cuts the budget and the school moves to Dessau, an industrial city whose mayor wants it. Former students become young masters: Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Hinnerk Scheper, Joost Schmidt, Gunta Stölzl. Bayer's lowercase universal alphabet, Breuer's tubular steel chairs and the school's lowercase letterhead all date from this year.
Gropius's new school opens in December: a glass curtain wall on the workshop wing, a bridge holding the administration, a studio block for students, and the masters' houses in a pine wood nearby. The school is now titled Hochschule für Gestaltung, a school of giving form, and fourteen Bauhausbücher begin to appear, including Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook and Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane.
Gropius resigns and the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer takes over, with the slogan people's needs, not luxury needs. Moholy-Nagy, Bayer and Breuer leave the same year. Under Meyer the school's wallpaper, made with the Rasch company from 1929, becomes its best selling product, and the architecture department, founded in 1927, builds the trade union school at Bernau.
Meyer is dismissed for his politics and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe becomes the third director. The school narrows toward architecture and interior design, and student politics are suppressed. Less is more is his phrase, and his Barcelona pavilion of 1929 is the clearest built example of it.
The Dessau council, now with a National Socialist majority, closes the school in 1932. Mies reopens it in Berlin as a private institute in a disused telephone factory. In April 1933 the Gestapo raid it; in July the masters vote to dissolve the school rather than accept the conditions for reopening. Fourteen years, three cities, about 1,250 students in all.
Gropius goes to London and then to Harvard in 1937; Breuer follows him. Moholy-Nagy founds the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. Mies goes to Chicago in 1938 and builds the campus of what becomes IIT. Josef and Anni Albers teach at Black Mountain College from 1933 and Josef at Yale from 1950. Bayer reaches the United States in 1938. Max Bill, a student in Dessau, opens the Ulm school in 1953. Weimar and Dessau's Bauhaus buildings are listed by UNESCO in 1996, the White City of Tel Aviv, built by émigré architects in the Bauhaus manner, in 2003.
three cities
weimar, 1919 to 1925
the expressionist years and the first exhibition. the city's conservatives never wanted it; the state cut the money in 1924.
dessau, 1925 to 1932
the famous building, the young masters, the products for industry, the three directors. the school most people mean when they say bauhaus.
berlin, 1932 to 1933
a private school in a disused factory, under mies, for ten months. then the raid, and the vote to close.
the people
fourteen of the many. the school had about 1,250 students in all; the women among them were steered toward weaving, and several of its finest designers came out of that workshop.
founder and director, 1919 to 1928. Wrote the manifesto, designed the Dessau building and the Törten housing estate, and held the school together through its moves. Later taught at Harvard.
master, preliminary course and color, 1919 to 1923. Invented the Vorkurs and taught color as a system of contrasts. His book The Art of Color, 1961, is the course in print.
master, wall painting and theory, 1922 to 1933. Taught analytical drawing and color, ran the 1923 questionnaire, and wrote Point and Line to Plane.
master, glass painting and weaving theory, 1921 to 1931. Taught form theory; his Pedagogical Sketchbook is the clearest statement of line, plane and rhythm the school produced.
master, metal workshop and preliminary course, 1923 to 1928. Turned the first course toward construction and the metal workshop toward lamps; wrote Painting Photography Film and coined the new vision. Founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago.
student 1920, master 1925 to 1933. Taught the preliminary course with paper and glass exercises; later wrote Interaction of Color at Yale, 1963.
student 1922, weaving workshop. Made weaving a modern art and a modern industry; her book On Weaving, 1965, is still the standard.
student 1919, head of weaving 1925 to 1931. The only woman to head a workshop. Under her the weaving workshop became the school's most productive, selling designs to industry.
student 1924, deputy head of metal 1928. The hemispherical teapot of 1924 and the Kandem bedside lamp of 1928 are hers; the lamp sold in tens of thousands.
student 1920, head of furniture 1925 to 1928. Bent tubular steel into the club chair of 1925 and refined the cantilever chair in 1928. Later an architect in the United States.
student 1921, head of printing and advertising 1925 to 1928. Designed the universal alphabet and the school's lowercase printed matter; the new typography in practice.
master, stage and sculpture, 1920 to 1929. Made the Triadic Ballet, in which costumes built from spheres, cones and discs decide how the dancers move. Stayed in Germany and died in 1943.
director, 1928 to 1930. Turned the school toward social use and cheap production; dismissed in 1930 for his politics.
director, 1930 to 1933. Led the school to its end in Berlin, then built Chicago's steel and glass. Less is more.
the workshops
| workshop | names | what came out of it |
|---|---|---|
| weaving | gunta stölzl, anni albers, benita koch-otte | wall hangings, upholstery and the first industrial textiles; the workshop that paid the bills. |
| metal | moholy-nagy, marianne brandt, wilhelm wagenfeld | teapots, lamps and the kandem range; the school's clearest objects. |
| furniture | marcel breuer, josef albers | tubular steel chairs, nesting tables, the furniture for the haus am horn and the masters' houses. |
| printing and advertising | herbert bayer, joost schmidt | posters, the bauhausbücher, the lowercase letterhead, the new typography. |
| wall painting | hinnerk scheper, kandinsky | color schemes for buildings, the wallpaper of 1929, the questionnaire of 1923. |
| stage | oskar schlemmer | the triadic ballet, the bauhaus dances, costume as geometry. |
| pottery | gerhard marcks, marguerite friedlaender, theodor bogler | in dornburg, near weimar; thrown forms that became industrial ceramics. |
| photography | lucia moholy, walter peterhans | lucia moholy's pictures are how the school is remembered; the department proper opened in 1929. |
| architecture | gropius, hannes meyer, mies | a department only from 1927: törten, the bernau school, the building itself. |
the ideas
the eight the system borrows. each links onward from the principles page.
- art and technology, a new unity.the 1923 slogan. the workshops stop being craft studios and start making prototypes for machines to copy.
- the preliminary course.everyone starts with the same half year of seeing: material, contrast, rhythm, color. then a workshop.
- the three forms and three colors.kandinsky's 1923 pairing of triangle, square and circle with yellow, red and blue; the school's shorthand ever since.
- lowercase.from 1925 the school writes small, and prints its reasons on the letterhead.
- truth to materials.steel bends, glass is clear, wood is wood. nothing is painted to look like something else.
- form follows function.sullivan's phrase, adopted as the school's order of work: use, then shape.
- the new typography.asymmetry, sans serif, the page as a field of forces; written down by tschichold in 1928.
- less is more.mies's phrase for buildings where the structure is all you see.
what came after
- the international style.the glass and steel architecture of the mid century, from chicago to tel aviv, is bauhaus architecture grown up.
- the swiss grid and helvetica.ulm, basel and zurich turned the school's typography into the international typographic style of the 1950s and 60s.
- design education.the foundation year taught in art schools worldwide is the vorkurs, renamed.
- furniture and objects.tubular steel chairs, the wagenfeld lamp and the brandt teapot are still in production.
- the design system.a small alphabet, learned by everyone, applied to everything: this site is the method, a hundred years on.
reading list
- Walter Gropius, Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, 1919the manifesto. four pages and a woodcut.
- Louis Sullivan, The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, 1896where form ever follows function comes from.
- Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1925line, plane and rhythm as a course.
- Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane, 1926form built from elements.
- László Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film, 1925, and The New Vision, 1930the camera as an instrument of seeing.
- Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy and Farkas Molnár, The Theater of the Bauhaus, 1925the stage workshop in its own words.
- Jan Tschichold, Die neue Typographie, 1928the rulebook for asymmetric typography.
- Johannes Itten, The Art of Color, 1961, and Design and Form, 1963the color course and the preliminary course, in print decades later.
- Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963a color is never seen alone.
- Anni Albers, On Weaving, 1965cloth as structure.
- Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus, 1969 in Englishthe standard documentary history.
- Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, 1984, and Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus 1919 to 1933, 1990the two readable overviews.
- Josef Müller-Brockmann, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, 1981the swiss grid, codified.
- Brad Frost, Atomic Design, 2016pages assembled from parts, for the web.
this list and the history above were written from memory in one sitting, without access to a library or the web. the dates and attributions are the standard ones, but verify them against wingler or droste before you quote them.