The Bauhaus masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building in Dessau. From the left: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl and Oskar Schlemmer.
Bauhaus 1919-33
The reality of technical civilisation, however, led to requirements that could not only be fulfilled by a re-evaluation of handcraft. In 1923, the Bauhaus reacted with a changed program, which was to mark its future image under the motto: "art and technology - a new unity". Industrial potentials were to be applied to satisfactory design standards, regarding both functional and aesthetic aspects. The Bauhaus workshops produced prototypes for mass production: from a single lamp to a complete dwelling.
Of course, the educational and social claim to a new configuration of life and its environment could not always be achieved. And the Bauhaus was not alone with this goal, but the name became a near synonym for this trend.The history of the Bauhaus is by no means linear. The changes in directorship and amongst the teachers, artistic influence from far and wide, in combination with the political situation in which the Bauhaus experiment was staged, led to permanent transformation. The numerous consequences of this experiment still today flow into contemporary life.
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.
Bauhaus style is characterized by severely economic, geometric design and by respect to materials.
Artists.
Wassily Kandinsky.
"Technically, every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos - by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of the spheres. The creation of the work of art is the creation of the world." Wassily Kandinsky".
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| Composition VII, Wassily Kandinsky, 1913. |
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow where he studied economics, law and ethnography there. In 1889, upon receiving a commission by the Russian Imperial Society of Friends of Natural History, Anthropology and Ethnography, Kandinsky embarked on a solo expedition to the remote Vologda province where he was impressed by native folk art. After being deeply moved by Monet's 'Haystack' in 1896, he moved to Munich to study painting. From 1901 to 1904, Kandinsky was heavily involved in the Phalanx exhibition society. After this he lived in a number of locations around Europe.
In 1909 Kandinsky began what was to be his most powerful and ambitious project entitled 'Compositions'. The first seven were produced between 1909 and 1913 and the final three in 1923, 1936 and 1939.
With the outbreak of the First World War, Kandinsky was forced to leave Munich and return to Russia where he became a respected teacher in various schools before taking up a post at the Bauhaus in 1922. Despite the geometrical precision that was the Bauhaus style, Kandinsky experimented with such forms as circles, triangles and uneven lines. In 1922 Kleine Welten was published containing examples of possibly Kandinsky's finest work as a graphic artist, and at this time he broadened his artistic range to designing stage sets, costumes and ceramic tiles.
In both his writings and paintings, Kandinsky has been enormously influential. He was intrigued by the possibility of conveying a range of emotions through the variety of colours and lines he chose to use. Kandinsky was influenced by a great many styles throughout his career, such as Art Nouveau at the turn-of-the-century, Symbolism around 1910 in his interest in the similar effects caused by both colours and sounds, and Surrealism towards the end of his career in 'Sky Blue' (1940) for example. His many works continue to be exhibited in many galleries worldwide.
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| Composition X, painted during WWII. (Kandinsky 1939) Paul Klee. "Art does not render the visible, it makes visible." Paul Klee. Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a Swiss and a German painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered colour theory, and wrote extensively about it; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are considered so important for modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance. He and his colleague, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus School of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humour and his sometimes-childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. Watercolour on pastel foundation on fabric (german description: "schirting", literally shirt material. Uncertain of what is really meant....) on newsprint on board. He settled in Munich to study art. During these early years his excursions into the domain of colour were rare as he devoted himself above all to drawing and inaugurated the very distinctive style, at once philosophical and satirical, which was to characterise his work until around 1913. After a visit to Italy, Klee discovered early Christian art and the works of Raphael, Leonardo and Botticelli. He left for Berne and underwent a deep revision of all his beliefs and theories about art. In 1906 he married Lily Stumpf and had a son. His career at this point was a mixture of successes and failures. Five years later he met Kandinsky and other artists from the newly founded 'Der Blaue Reiter' group (The Blue Rider). Klee believed that they shared a deep-rooted impulse to transform nature into a spiritual and pictorial equivalent. The following year an even more influential meeting took place with Robert Delaunay who gave equal and independent importance to colour, light and movement in his work. In 1914 Klee's pre-occupation with colour was heightened during a trip to Tunisia. After World War One Klee's reputation was increasing. By 1920 he had joined the Bauhaus group where he was to teach for the next decade. Violently attacked and forced to move by the Nazis, Klee returned to Berne penniless after all his German funds had been confiscated. He started to produce larger pieces with fine linear qualities and bold graphic strokes. 1934 not only brought him his first English exhibition but sadly, the onset of skin cancer. In 1937 he resumed work with a phenomenal drive and energy, but died three years later near Locarno. Klee was extraordinarily prolific, producing almost 9,000 works during his career. Working in a number of different styles and media he was extremely flexible in his techniques as he explored the human psyche through his art. Yet his work remains highly distinctive and he continues to be amongst the most popular artists of the 20th century. |
