Bauhaus Art Movement

It was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimer by German architect Walter Gropius. The objective was to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of arts. The reason for this was to combine architecture, sculpture and painting into a single creative expression. He invented a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers able to create useful and beautiful objects that fit into this new system of living.

Summery, he wanted to create a new type of art where you could create the weird and wonderful and were people could express themselves through different medium of arts.

It combined elements of both fine arts and design education. This commenced with a preliminary course that immersed students, who came from different social areas and educational backgrounds, in the study of materials, colour theory and formal relationships in preparation for more specialized studies. This course was taught often by visual artists including Paul Klee, Vasily Kandisky and Josef Albers among others.

Paul Klee In the spring of 1919, Klee rented a large studio in the Schloss

Suresnes, a neglected eighteenth-century palace in Schwabing, Munich's artists' quarter. According to Klee's son Felix, Suresnes, its park, and the nearby Englischer Garten served as inspiration for this watercolor. It depicts Ionic columns, a large chestnut leaf, a thin black cross, a small red pavilion, and a boat on the River Isar, which flows through Munich.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_yZRK6Geew

Marcel Breuer The cabinetmaking workshop was one of the most popular at the Bauhaus.

Under the direction of Marcel Breuer from 1924 to 1928, this studio reconceived the very essence of furniture, often seeking to dematerialize conventional forms such as chairs to their minimal existence. Breuer theorized that eventually chairs would become obsolete, replaced by supportive columns or air. Inspired by the extruded steel tubes of his bicycle, he experimented with metal furniture, ultimately creating lightweight, mass-producible metal chairs. Some of these chairs were deployed in the theater of the Dessau building.

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EXAMPLES

Gunta Stölzl The textile workshop, especially under the direction of designer and

weaver Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983), created abstract textiles suitable for use in Bauhaus environments. Students studied color theory and design as well as the technical aspects of weaving. Stölzl encouraged experimentation with unorthodox materials, including cellophane, fiberglass, and metal. While the weaving studio was primarily comprised of women, this was in part due to

the fact that they were discouraged from participating in other areas.

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Gunta Stölzl and Marcel Breuer

World War II During the turbulent and often dangerous years of World War II, many of

the key figures of the Bauhaus emigrated to the United States, where their work and their teaching philosophies influenced generations of young architects and designers. Marcel Breuer and Joseph Albers taught at Yale, Walter Gropius went to Harvard, and Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_c6AlBBCCI

ABC’s of Bauhaus