The German Bauhaus Movement (1919-1933) was one of the most influential design movements of the 20th century. A reaction to social change, brought about by experiences in World War I, poverty and inflation, the Bauhaus inspired an aesthetic relevance which highly influenced design, architecture and art of the day. Bauhaus designs emphasized the use of straight edges, smooth, slim forms, sparsely furnished rooms and shining steel, the new chosen media for furniture. The goal here was to take advantage of mass production to create a style that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Everything was to be designed with simplicity, multiplicity, economical use of space, material, time and money in mind. This movement sought to close the gap between social idealism and commercial reality and to respond to the quickly emerging technological advancements of our culture.
The School
Founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus school was a combination of the Weimar Art Academy and the Weimar Arts and Crafts school. Gropius was a true believer in the Werkbund Movement, which sought to unite art, economics and engineering. Thus students here were trained by artists, architects and master craftsmen in order to fully grasp these beliefs and educate future artists with the fundamentals of science and economics. The unity of creative imagination and practical knowledge produced a new sense of functional design. Each student needed a combined practical and theoretical education of different disciplines in order to produce work that unified intellectual, practical and aesthetic properties through artistic endeavor and experimentation of new technologies. Gropius felt that this would insure the successful integration of design theory and the industrial process.
The schools educational program worked to establish a relationship between the emerging modernism of fine arts to the entire spectrum of design and craft fields including architecture, town planning, advertising and exhibition design, stage design, photography, film and materials such as metal, ceramics and textiles. |
