The Bauhaus School - Germany, 1919-1933

Walter Gropius, The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany, 1925-26 (click photo for larger image)The Bauhaus School of design was founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius. An internationally influential style--Bauhaus integrated the prevailing Expressionism with the realms of architecture and design. Later led by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the school’s faculty included some of the most significant figures in the art world of the day--such as Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszio Moholy-Nagy and Annie Albers. The Bauhaus school was shut down by the Nazis in 1933. A number of Bauhaus artists emigrated to the United States, in the years leading up to World War II. Underlying the Bauhaus aesthetic utopianism, based upon ideals of simplified forms and unadorned functionalism. The Bauhaus artists believed that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses, using techniques and materials used in industrial manufacturing and fabrication. Such materials as steel concrete, chrome and glass were stables of Bauhaus production.

 Lyonel Feininger'Gaberndorf II', oil on canvas, 1924, 39 X 30.5 in. (click photo for larger image)