Walter Gropius outlines the guiding principles of Bauhaus living, from household utensils to textiles and ceramics The Bauhaus sought to unite life, craftsmanship and art under one coherent ethos and aesthetic. In New Works from Bauhaus Workshops--the seventh of the Bauhaus' publications--the institute's founder, Walter Gropius (1888-1969), provides a comprehensive overview of the Bauhaus workshops. He explains the basic principles guiding the teaching, describes contemporary developments in architecture and illuminates the Bauhaus point of view on household utensils, which was geared toward finding the most suitable form for the respective object. Here, Gropius presents the Bauhaus workshops in Weimar devoted to furniture, metals, textiles and ceramics, among other subjects.
The Bauhaus, the school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, brought together artists, architects and designers in an extraordinary conversation about modern art. Bauhaus 1919-1933, published to accompany a major multimedia exhibition at MoMA, is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject by MoMA since 1938 and offers a new generational perspective on the 20th century's most influential experiment in artistic education. It brings together works in a broad range of mediums, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and costume design, and painting and sculpture - many of which have rarely if ever been seen outside of Germany. Featuring about 400 colour plates and a rich range of documentary images, this publication includes two overarching images by the exhibition's curators, Leah Dickerman and Barry Bergdoll, concise interpretive essays on key objects by over twenty leading scholars, and an illustrated, narrative chronology.
Few creative movements have been more influential than the Bauhaus, under the leadership of Walter Gropius. The art of the theater commanded special attention. The text in this volume is a loose collection of essays by Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Farkas Molnár (who in an illustrated essay shares his vision of a total theatre space), with an introduction by Bauhaus leader Walter Gropius. Originally published in German in 1924, Die Bühne im Bauhaus was translated by A. S. Wensinger and published by Wesleyan in 1961. It was prepared with the full cooperation of Walter Gropius and his introduction was written specially for this edition. From Bauhaus experiments there emerged a new aesthetic of stage design and presentation, a new concept of "total theater." Its principles and practices, revolutionary in their time and far in advance of all but the most experimental stagecraft today, were largely the work of Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and their students. Profusely illustrated and startling in its typography (the work of Moholy-Nagy), the 1924 volume quickly became a collector's item and is now virtually unobtainable. Those interested in the stage, the modern visual arts, or in the bold steps of the men of genius who broadened the horizons of aesthetic experience will appreciate that this translation is available again.
“This is an absolute triumph—ideas, lives, and the dramas of the twentieth century are woven together in a feat of storytelling. A masterpiece.” —Edmund de Waal, ceramic artist and author of The White Road The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildings—Fagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Am—but no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki: countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design. Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women’s artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as “a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated.” Gropius offers a poignant and personal story—and a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism.
This book, a valuable introduction to the Bauhaus movement, is generously illustrated with examples of students' experiments and typical contemporary achievements. The text also contains an autobiographical sketch.
One of the most important books on the modernist movement in architecture, written by a founder of the Bauhaus school. One of the most important books on the modern movement in architecture, The New Architecture and The Bauhaus poses some of the fundamental problems presented by the relations of art and industry and considers their possible, practical solution. Gropius traces the rise of the New Architecture and the work of the now famous Bauhaus and, with splendid clarity, calls for a new artist and architect educated to new materials and techniques and directly confronting the requirements of the age.
Nicholas Fox Weber, for thirty-three years head of the Albers Foundation, spent many years with Anni and Josef Albers, the only husband-and-wife artistic pair at the Bauhaus (she was a textile artist; he a professor and an artist, in glass, metal, wood, and photography). The Alberses told him their own stories and described life at the Bauhaus with their fellow artists and teachers, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well these figures’ lesser-known wives and girlfriends. In this extraordinary group biography, Weber brilliantly brings to life the Bauhaus geniuses and the community of the pioneering art school in Germany’s Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s and early 1930s. Here are: Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, the architect who streamlined design early in his career and who saw the school as a place for designers to collaborate in an ideal setting . . . a dashing hussar, the ardent young lover of the renowned femme fatale Alma Mahler, beginning when she was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler . . . Paul Klee, the onlooker, smoking his pipe, observing Bauhaus dances as well as his colleagues’ lectures from the back of the room . . . the cook who invented recipes and threw together his limited ingredients with the same spontaneity, sense of proportion, and fascination that underscored his paintings . . . Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian-born pioneer of abstract painting, guarding a secret tragedy one could never have guessed from his lively paintings, in which he used bold colors not just for their visual vibrancy, but for their “sound” effects . . . Josef Albers, who entered the Bauhaus as a student in 1920 and was one of the seven remaining faculty members when the school was closed by the Gestapo in 1933 . . . Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann, a Berlin heiress, an intrepid young woman, who later, as Anni Albers, made art the focal point of her existence . . . Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, imperious, decisive, often harsh, an architect who became director—the last—of the Bauhaus, and the person who guided the school’s final days after SS storm troopers raided the premises. Weber captures the life, spirit, and flair with which these geniuses lived, as well as their consuming goal of making art and architecture. A portrait infused with their fulsome embrace of life, their gift for laughter, and the powerful force of their individual artistic personalities.
A fresh look at the influential pedagogy and practice pioneered by the Bauhaus Founded by architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969) in 1919, the Bauhaus was the 20th century's most influential school of art, architecture, and design. After the school was shuttered under pressure from the Nazis in 1933, many Bauhaus artists brought their innovative practices and teaching methods to the United States. Gropius himself accepted a position at Harvard, where he would help establish a collection of Bauhaus material that has since grown to more than 30,000 objects--the largest such collection outside Germany. Harvard in turn became an unofficial center for the Bauhaus in America. Written by established and emerging voices in the field, the scholarship presented here expands on the special link between the two institutions, while highlighting understudied aspects of the Bauhaus, such as weaving, photography, and art made by women. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations--some of never-before-published objects--this book yields fascinating insights for Bauhaus devotees and design aficionados. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums
