Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by architect, Walter Gropius with the aim of  bridging the gap between art, design and industry and unifying all three. 

 It was a school where students received theoretical and practical training in all of the fine arts -ceramics, murals, stained glass, typography, metalwork, book binding, stone sculpture and furniture-making – and learned to combine these fine art skills with new technologies to design and manufacture products that were both beautiful and practical.

The period between 1924 and 1928 was the most significant in the development of the Bauhaus.

  In 1922, Van Doesburg taught a course at the Bauhaus and these De Stijl principles are clearly reflected in the stark simplicity and functionalism of much of the Bauhaus output after that


. It is interesting to note that a Bauhaus building in the ‘international style’ can be seen as a three dimensional version of a painting by Dutch artist and De Stijl member, Piet Mondrian.

Gropius also began to recognise the ability of machines to make works of beauty and the Bauhaus embraced the ‘machine aesthetic’, creating designs for household items that could be mass produced using modern technology.

Political pressure and constant scrutiny by the Nazi movement continued to cast a shadow over the school and in 1928 Gropius resigned and was succeeded by Hannes Meyer.  The structure of the school became less rigid and Meyer encouraged the design of wallpapers and textiles as well as lamps and furniture.

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