The Bauhaus (8.11)

Mies van der Rohe

the last director of the Bauhaus design school in Dessau, from 1930 until its closing in 1933. The architect and designer is also one of the best-known exponents of the modernist International Style.

The Bauhaus

The school's concepts aroused vigorous opposition from right-wing politicians and academicians. In 1925, the school moved to the more friendly atmosphere of Dessau, where Gropius designed special buildings to house the various departments. In the summer of 1932, opposition to the school had increased to such an extent that the city of Dessau withdrew its support. The school was then moved to Berlin, where the faculty endeavored to carry on their ideas, but in 1933 the Nazi government closed the school entirely. However, the ideas, enveloping design in architecture, furniture, weaving, and typography, among others, had by this time found wide acclaim in many parts of the world and esp. in the U.S.

Josef Albers

(1888-1976) worked at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1933. During that time he created "Impossibles," a sand-blasted, flashed glass work that represents his experiments with nontraditional materials and techniques, in the character of the Bauhaus school. The mechanical means of producing such glass pieces allowed him to achieve the discipline and detachment that he considered necessary to create nonrepresentational forms. Like other artists of his generation, Albers moved from a figurative style of picture-making to geometrically based abstraction.

Kandinsky - "Composition No. 8" (early 20C)

-colorful, interactive geometric forms create a pulsating surface that is alternately dynamic and calm, aggressive and quiet. -The importance of circles in this painting prefigures the dominant role they would play in many subsequent works, culminating in his cosmic and harmonious image "Several Circles." -Artist claimed that "The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension."

Mies van der Rohe

His "less-is-more" philosophy has become a catchphrase for much of 20th century design, though a preference for luxurious and costly materials often underscores the deceptive simplicity of his elegant and refined designs. This graceful, elegant, and beautifully proportioned "MR" chair, was introduced by him at the 1927 Stuttgart exhibition and has remained in production ever since. In 1938, the artist left Germany for America, where he headed the architecture department at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Kandinsky

When this artist returned to his native Moscow after the outbreak of World War I, his expressive abstract style underwent changes that reflected the utopian artistic experiments of the Russian avant-garde. The emphasis on geometric forms, promoted by artists such as Kazimir Malevich in an effort to establish a universal aesthetic language, inspired him to expand his own pictorial vocabulary. Although he adopted some aspects of the geometrizing trends of Suprematism and Constructivism — such as overlapping flat planes and clearly delineated shapes — his belief in the expressive content of abstract forms alienated him from the majority of his Russian colleagues, who championed more rational, systematizing principles. This conflict led him to return to Germany in 1921. In 1922, he joined the faculty of the Bauhaus, where he discovered a more sympathetic environment in which to pursue his art. While there, he furthered his investigations into the correspondence between colors and forms and their psychological and spiritual effects.

The Bauhaus

an influential school of art and architecture in Germany from 1919-1933; revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts. Philosophically, the school was built on the idea that design did not merely reflect society, it could actually help to improve it.

The Bauhaus

founded at Weimar in 1919 and headed by *Walter Gropius*, with a faculty that included *Paul Klee*, *Wassily Kandinsky*, *Ludwig Mies van der Rohe*, *Josef Albers*, and *Gunta Stolzl*. The teaching plan insisted on functional craftsmanship in every field, with a concentration on the industrial problems of mechanical mass production. The style was characterized by economy of method, a severe geometry of form, and design that took into account the nature of the materials employed.