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Walter Gropius founds the Bauhaus in

Weimar.

For political reasons the

Bauhaus moves to Dessau. In June

the first in a series of “Bauhaus

books” is published.

Authors: Gropius, Moholy-Nagy,

Klee, Kandinsky und Mondrian.

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The Bauhaus in Dessau bears the

new name “College for

Construction and Design.” On

December 4, the new Bauhaus

building, designed by Gropius, is

dedicated.

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In April a Department of Architecture opens; the

architect Hannes Meyer is named

department chair.

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Walter Gropius steps down as

director in April in order to work as an architect in Berlin. At his suggestion,

Hannes Meyer becomes the new

director. The Bauhaus has 166 students in this

year.

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Under the photographer

Walter Peterhans a Department of

Photography is set up.

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Accused of communist leanings, the director Hannes Meyer is fired by the city of Dessau.

With the help of Gropius, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe becomes the

new director in April.

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Again for political

reasons the Bauhaus has to move to

Berlin.

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The Bauhaus is shut down by the Nazis on April 11. 32 students are arrested and

later released.

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Following the immigration of many Bauhaus

artists, the “New Bauhaus”

(today's Institute of Design) is founded in Chicago.

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The Bauhaus-Archiv e.V. (association) is

established in Darmstadt.

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Walter Gropius designs a museum

building for the Bauhaus Archive in Darmstadt, but

the project is never completed

there.

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The Bauhaus Archive moves to

West Berlin.

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Under the East German

government the Scientific-Cultural Center Bauhaus Dessau is set up

and begins to assemble a

collection on the history of the

Bauhaus.

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After three years of construction,

the new museum building for the

Bauhaus Archive opens in West

Berlin.

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In Dessau the Bauhaus Dessau Center for Design

opens in the former Bauhaus

building.

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In Weimar a Bauhaus Museum

opens on the Theaterplatz

(Theater Square).

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The museum building in Berlin is placed under

landmark protection.

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The Bauhaus design school had its centre in Weimar Germany near the mid 20th century. The Bauhaus artists were interested in eliminating subject matter from their compositions, and instead focused solely on the elements of design themselves. The Bauhaus movement can be reduced to three main concepts:

form follows function

economy of form

integrity of materials

A phrase coined by the Bauhaus in describing the minimal approach to design. "Economy" refers to a limited "budget" of elements the artist would use to complete the design. The Bauhaus movement stripped the designs of any extraneous, unnecessary elements and reduced design to the minimum amount of elements necessary to convey the idea. Much of the graphic design in the Bauhaus era

relied solely on the use of type.

A phrase coined by the Bauhaus movement which describes how the form of an object (it's dimensional appearance) is descriptive of how the object is used.

For example, if the function of a chair is to support a person in a sitting position, the form would be a horizontal surface and a vertical surface resting on a frame. No embellishments would be added to the form: it would be strictly functional in appearance.

A phrase coined by the Bauhaus in describing how artists would not disguise a material and try to make it appear to be something else. Paintings were not pictorial representations of something three dimensional, but rather an experiment in colour, value, shape and line. The Bauhaus artists would shudder at fake wood, veneers, plastic leather and such. If a table was made of steel and glass, it would look very much like steel and glass, (as opposed to looking like vines or floral patterns, such as found in wrought iron designs).

Walter Gropius was born in Berlin in 1883. The son of an architect, he studied at the Technical Universities in Munich and Berlin. He joined the office of Peter Behrens in 1910 and three years later established a practice with Adolph Meyer. For his early commissions he borrowed from the Industrial Classicism introduced by Behrens.

Gropius created innovative designs that borrowed materials and methods of construction from modern technology. This advocacy of industrialized building carried with it a belief in team work and an acceptance of standardization and prefabrication. Using technology as a basis, he transformed building into a science of precise mathematical calculations.

After serving in the war, Gropius became involved with several groups of radical artists that sprang up in Berlin in the winter of 1918. In March 1919 he was elected chairman of the Working Council for Art and a month later was appointed Director of the Bauhaus.

Gropius died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969.

Marcel Lajos Breuer Johannes Itten Vasilii Kandinskii

Vasilii Kandinskii was a painter, a printmaker, a stage designer, a decorative artist, and a theorist. In 1886 he began to study law and economics at the University of Moscow. Three years later he took part in an ethnographiccal expedition to the Vologda province and wrote an article about folk art; this experience was to influence his early art, which would be highly decorative and would feature bright colors applied on the dark background. This effective technique can be seen in such paintings as Song of the Volga (1906), Couple Riding (1906), and Colorful Life (1907), devoted to the life of Old Russia.

He was responsible for designing the pedagogical program for the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) for 1920, which included Suprematism, Tatlin's "Culture of Materials" and Kandinskii's own theories. The program was opposed by the future Constructivists and Kandinskii had to wait for its implementation till his years at the Bauhaus. In 1921 he was actively involved in the organization of Rakhn (Russian Academy of Aesthetics). At the end of the same year, Kandinskii went to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus, where he was to stay till its closure by the Nazis in 1933. Participated in the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung in Berlin (1922). In 1924, together with Feininger, Iavlenskii, and Klee, established the Blue Four. Moved to Paris in 1933 and remained active as a painter till his death.

Walter Gropius Marcel Lajos Breuer Johannes Itten

Marcel Lajos Breuer was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1902, and became on of the greatest architects and furniture designers of the 20th century .

Breuer used new technologies and new materials in order to develop his 'International Style' of work.

Breuer first studied art in Vienna after winning a scholarship.

Marcel was unhappy with the institution and found work instead at a Vienese architecture office. From 1920 to 1928 he was a student and teacher at Germany's Bauhaus, a school of design where modern principles, technologies and the application of new materials were encouraged in both the industrial and fine arts.

During his time spent there Marcel completed the carpentry apprenticeship. While there he designed and made the African chair and the Slatted Chair.

Walter Gropius

Johannes Itten Vasilii Kandinskii

Johannes Itten was a Froebel trained elementary school teacher. After training in Geneva and Stuttgart, Johannes Itten settled in Vienna in 1916 where he taught at his own art school. He met Walter Gropius who, in 1919, invited him to join the Bauhaus which he had recently established in Weimar, the German capital. The Bauhaus was founded by the combining of the Weimar Art Academy, and the Weimar Arts and Crafts School. Students at this new school were trained by both an artist and a master craftsman.

Itten started the Bauhaus foundations course with its emphasis on unusual uses of common materials. Students were presented with discarded materials (wire mesh, cardboard, newspapers, matchboxes, phonograph needles and razor blades) and instructed to basteln; to improvise something. Other assignments involved the study of materials. Wood, feathers, mosses, hides had to be looked at, touched and drawn until they were known by heart and could be from memory. The idea was to transcend realistic reproduction to achieve an interpretative design instead of a mere imitation.

Itten developed a general theory of contrast, the main theme of which was the "clair / obscure contrast", as the basis for this course. This was treated in various assignments: first in the form of checker-board patterns, then in abstract and finally in realistic works. Classical pictures were also analysed with the same aim in mind. By dividing it up into squares, the student was induced to work through the entire area of the picture with awareness, and to make a new decision each time regarding the respective grey value.

Walter Gropius Marcel Lajos Breuer

Vasilii Kandinskii

This is the most copied of all Breuer's chairs. The frame was originally made from bent, nickelled, tubular steel. It later became chrome plated. The seat and the back are made from canvas , fabric or leather.. It was designed for Kandinsky's quarters at the Dessau

Bauhaus. It was at the time quite revolutionary in its use of tubular steel. It was inspired by an Adler bike.

Marianne Brandt teapot - MBTK 24 Si bauhaus DESSAU

Josef Albers fruit bowl - JA 24 Si

This pot is a part of the tea and coffee set, designed by Marianne Brandt in 1924. Only one complete set is known to exist. The tea pot,

on the other hand, is in several museums, a.o. in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. They were very obliging in giving us a technical

drawing, from which our reproduction was manufactured.

The Marianne Brandt teapot is the part of the set, which most strictly follows the formal principles of the Bauhaus school. Circle, globe and

square are the basic forms of the construction.

Wassily Chair No.B3 (1925-1927) bauhaus DESSAU

Josef Albers fruit bowl - JA 24 Si

"The ultimate goal of all art is the building." Bauhaus manifesto, 1919.

The headquarters of the Bauhaus at its second home in Dessau has become a landmark of the twentieth century and the embodiment of Bauhaus credo.

Designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, in 1996, this important and profoundly influential building will form the central focus of the Design Museum's

exhibition Bauhaus Dessau. At the time of the school's completion in 1926 no other building matched its design and it received ecstatic praise from

contemporary modernist critics including Le Corbusier. Walter Gropius' design for the Bauhaus at Dessau reflected the spirit of the time, like a De Stijl painting, it

was composed of basically related functional elements that produced a cohesive interrelated asymmetrical whole. The solution underlined the notion of the

building as a 'total work' of compositional architecture.

Wassily Chair No.B3 (1925-1927)

While he was at the Bauhaus, Josef Albers designed furniture and smaller objects - tea glasses and fruit bowls. Two fruit bowl designs, created in 1924, are illustrated in Bauhausbuch No. 7. The design includes a round glass plate by three black plastic balls. The space between the ring and the glass plate

allows air to circulate to prevent fruit from spoiling. Our reproduction is inspired by the original bowl in the Bauhaus Archiv.