What is the Bauhaus?

Introduction

The Staatliches Bauhaus (often simply referred to as the Bauhaus) began as a school of design that ran in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The Bauhaus’s legacy is a complex one. Its trajectory is closely intertwined with the history of the Weimar Republic, where the Bauhaus school operated between the two world wars in Germany. With its famous geometric shapes, bold colors and clean lines, its modernist style is often heralded as “one of the strongest and most resounding artistic and cultural movements of the 20th century” (Michael Siebenbrodt and Lutz Schöbe, Bauhaus, 2015). Indeed, the Bauhaus is among many modernist art movements that experimented with form, representation, and shape. However, unlike other avant-garde movements such as Surrealism or Dadaism, the Bauhaus radically rethought how art could be taught and consciously aimed to unify art, crafts, technology, and architecture in order to create objects that were both functional and aesthetic. 

As a term it is often, as Elizabeth Otto writes, used as a “shorthand for modernity, quality, and minimalism; it has been used to sell everything from hardware to hair care” ("Introduction," Bauhaus Bodies, 2019). However, as David Spaeth notes, the Bauhaus is also “the story of an idea, an idea full of hope and promise. It is an idea about how people might live” (“Introduction,” Inside the Bauhaus, 1986, [2014]). 

This guide offers an overview of the Bauhaus’s ideas, from its beginnings to its main aesthetic styles and components, to its legacy, in order to explore its pioneering approach to balancing form and function. 

Bauhaus’s beginnings and influences

The architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919. The school was the successor of two separate institutes which Gropius merged: the Grand Ducal Saxon Art Academy and the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts, where the latter had been closed since 1915. Éva Forgács writes that this merger 

Indeed, in founding the Bauhaus, Gropius sought unity among the creative arts, combining the old schools of painting with handicraft, architecture, sculpture, and design. This impulse is reflected in the school’s name, as Melissa Trimingham notes, 

As the new director, Gropius launched the school in April 1919 with a four-page manifesto-like brochure, which stated: 

The radical ideas expressed here were inspired by the medieval guilds, the Duetscher Wekbund (a collective of German artists, architects, and industrialists), the ideas of William Morris in the mid-nineteenth century, and the British Arts and Crafts Movement in the 1860s and 70s; all of these worked to bridge the chasm between art, handicraft, and design. However, the Bauhaus rejected the idea of individually crafted luxury items that motivated the Arts and Crafts Movement. Instead, the Bauhaus was much more interested in how to make beautiful and functional objects that could be mass-produced. As Alan Powers states, 

As well as being influenced by various artistic and cultural movements, the school was also formed during a moment of political upheaval. Forgás writes,

Stemming from a mixture of shock and trauma from the war, alongside the momentum from the revolution in 1918, the Bauhaus was underpinned by a desire to — as Gropius set out in the Bauhaus brochure — “create the new structure of the future” (1919, [2024]), to better serve the public.

The Bauhaus style and characteristics

Although the Bauhaus movement was made up of many individual designers, artists, and teachers (who sometimes had contrasting aesthetics and ideas), the school’s style emerged broadly simple and functional, where it was also characterized by its use of new materials and its enthusiastic approach to mass production. 

Simplicity 

The Bauhaus designers favored clean lines, geometric shapes, abstract forms, and a lack of decoration. For the Bauhaus, form followed function. This maxim was made manifest in furniture, buildings, interiors, carpentry, pottery, weaving, lettering, dance, stagecraft, and painting. For example, the stark lines and rectangles in László Moholy-Nagy’s K VII (1922) (Figure 1) highlight the rational and radical simplicity that motivated this certain strand of the Bauhaus style.

Fig. 1. László Moholy-Nagy (1922) K VII. (Uploaded by Sailko, 2016, Wikimedia Commons) 

New materials 

The Bauhaus experimented with and often mixed many machine-made materials. For example, the Bauhaus student Anni Albers pioneered a radical tactile sensibility through her weaving, and often combined natural yarns with synthetic fibers, exploring the interplay between the inner structure or function and the outward sense of touch. “For too long,” she states, “we have made too little use of the medium of tactility” (On Weaving, 2017). Albers experimented with form, shape, and materials, which can be seen in the interlocking shapes and colors of her weavings, wall hangings, and room partitions, like Ancient Writing (1936) or Free-Hanging Room Divider (1949).

Functionality 

Form followed function in metalwork objects like Marianne Brandt’s Tea Infuser and Strainer (1924). With its smooth surface and geometric shapes, the teapot is only three inches tall; it is designed to create a concentrated infusion, when mixed with boiling water, to control the strength of the tea.

These curving shapes and bold lines can be seen in designs of chairs, staircases, and balconies. Whether it is the structure of buildings like Bauhaus Dessau (Figure 2), or present in paintings like Wassily Kandinsky’s “Composition 8” (1923), the Bauhaus’s pieces were all resoundingly modern in their approach to functionality. The Bauhaus reimagined everyday objects and, in doing so, they also questioned the shapes and forms that modern life could take. 

Fig. 2. Gropius, W. (1925) Bauhaus Dessau. (Photographed by Allan T. Kohl, 2003, Flickr)

Mass production 

One of the Bauhaus’s aims was to reconcile the ways that individualistic artistry and mass production could interact. As Robin Schuldenfrei notes,

The Bauhaus’s optimistic and egalitarian beliefs in the power of industry sit in tension with much of the school’s outputs.

The Bauhaus’s objects — such as Brandt’s teapot — were intended for mass production, however their cost and complex fabrication prohibited this: as Schuldenfrei writes, many of these objects are now housed in museums and galleries around the world, and represent “a product of their place in the Weimar Republic social order that they also sought to transform” (2018). The Bauhaus encompasses the many tensions and contradictions between art and production; the hopeful possibilities and the failures of modernism. Outside of the Bauhaus, the mass production of art has been much debated. For more on this topic, see our guide on the culture industry, and how these debates feature in other movements and groups, such as the Frankfurt School.

From Weimar to Berlin: the Bauhaus directors 

From its foundation in 1919 to its dissolution in 1933, the Bauhaus school had three art directors and moved around Germany. These shifts resulted in changes in the curriculum. Indeed, Forgás reminds us that far from a unified movement, the Bauhaus school was “the stage of a clash of personal and group ambitions, conflicting beliefs and convictions” (1995). Throughout its lifespan, the school operated through a system of teaching workshops (offered in carpentry, metal, pottery, stained glass, wall painting, weaving,  graphics, typography, and stagecraft), where it was first run by Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930, and then finally by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until its end in 1933. It also relocated from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, before it moved to Berlin in 1933. What follows is a chronological overview of the different art directors of the Bauhaus. 

Walter Gropius 

In its early years, the school was, as Werner Durth notes, “closely linked to Expressionism,” and can be seen as a “turning point away from the conventions of Imperial Germany in search for a new beginning” (Bauhaus 100, 2023), where Gropius alongside the artists Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and the art educator Johannes Itten all participated in a model of what Forgács describes as “democratic creative community, proving by their own example that a better world does exist” (1995). 

Hannes Meyer

The Swiss architect Meyer was named the director of the Bauhaus in 1928 after Gropius stepped down. Meyer’s maxims “The needs of the people instead of the needs of luxury” (Bauhaus 100, 2023) and “Art will become reality” (The Bauhaus and Public Relations, 2014), alongside his anti-capitalist stance, communist sympathies, and functionalist vision, all created what Patrick Rössler describes as “a notion of ‘Bauhaus’ that existed more fully in the realm of ideas than was ever actualized at the school” (The Bauhaus and Public Relations, 2014). As Rössler goes on to explain,

Meyer’s directorship is often characterized as one of conflict, where his functionalist outlook resulted in the resignations of teachers like Herbert Bayer and Marcel Breuer. However, Meyer’s vision also pushed the curriculum further towards architecture and design, and he also oversaw the creation of two significant building feats: the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau bei Berlin in 1930, and five apartment buildings in Dessau from 1929 to 1930.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Meyer was removed from the Bauhaus and replaced by Mies van der Rohe, in an attempt to depoliticize what T’ai Smith describes as the school’s “communist tailspin” that Meyer left, in an increasingly unstable and anxious Weimar Republic (“The Identity of Design as Intellectual Property,” Bauhaus Construct, 2013). Mies van der Rohe’s famous dictum was “Less is more,” and under his direction, the Bauhaus’s curriculum underwent many changes, where it was, as Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst write, “turned into something approaching a school of architecture, operating with little of its former rambunctiousness and much midnight oil” (Mies van der Rohe, 2012). Despite his short tenure, with the Bauhaus closing in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi party, Mies van der Rohe’s teaching of architecture, as what Michael Siebenbrodt and Lutz Schöbe describe as “the supreme conciliation of space, materials and proportions'' had a lasting impact on the Bauhaus’s ideas of design (Bauhaus, 2015). 

These various changes in location and leadership resulted in pivots in perspective, politics, as well as the people involved: different instructors — or masters, as they were called — and students — referred to as apprentices and, later, as journeymen — came and went, including influential artists such as László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Benita Koche-Otte, Klee, Lilly Reich, Kandinsky, Albers, Gunda Stözl, and Gertrud Arndt.

Legacy 

The Bauhaus’s history is interwoven with modernism and modernity, where it responded to turbulence and change with innovation and experimentation. As a school, it reimagined the way that arts, crafts, and technology could interact harmoniously but be taught to others. 

After the Bauhaus closed, many masters and apprentices continued to produce creative works and teach. A number emigrated to America, with Breuer and Gropius teaching at Harvard University, Josef Albers and Anni Albers teaching at Black Mountain College, Miles van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Moholy-Nagy establishing the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. Much scholarly work has explored various aspects of the Bauhaus including its politics, theater, and the individuals within the school’s community. There has been increasing attention on the work done by women and the Bauhaus’s queer histories, with recent works like Elizabeth Otto’s Haunted Bauhaus (2020) and Anne Massey’s Women in Design (2022).

The ideas, styles, and shapes that the Bauhaus forged are still very much used in our present moment. From an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to the arts to the ergonomic chairs we might sit in, to buildings we pass on the street, to the famous curves and contours of the Bauhaus typography, the experimental and avant-garde notions of the Bauhaus are still with us today, which tried to imagine a better world.

Further reading on Perlego 

Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (2022) by Alexandra Chiriac

Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (2014) by Alexandra Harris

Point and Line to Plane (2012) by Wassily Kandinsky

The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47 (2007) by Partha Mitter

The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (2012) by László Moholy-Nagy and Daphne M. Hoffmann

Architectural Theory of Modernism: Relating Functions and Forms (2016) by Ute Poerschke

Herbert Bayer, Graphic Designer: From the Bauhaus to Berlin, 1921–1938 (2023) by Patrick Rössler

Design and Visual Culture from the Bauhaus to Contemporary Art: Optical Deconstructions (2018) by Edit Tóth

External resources 

Ambler, F. (2018) The Story of Bauhaus. Octopus. 

Bergdoll, B. and Dickerman, L. (2009) Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity. Museum of Modern Art. 

Hitchcock, H. R. and Johnson, P. (1932) The International Style. W. W. Norton. 

MacCarthy, F. (2019) Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus. Faber & Faber.

Wolfe, T. (2009) From Bauhaus to Our House. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

Bibliography 

Albers, A. (2017) On Weaving. Princeton University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/740115

Durth, W. (2023) Bauhaus 100: Sites of Modernism. Hatje Cantz. 

Forgács, É. (1995) The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics. Central European University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3227780 

Gropius, W. (2024) “Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar,” Bauhaus Manifesto 1919, Gropius House.
Massey, A. (2022) Women in Design. Thames and Hudson Ltd. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3772972

Otto, E. (2020) Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, Radical Politics. MIT Press. 

Otto, E. (2019) "Introduction: Embodying the Bauhaus," in Otto, E. and Rössler, P. (eds.) Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School. Bloomsbury. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/866812

Powers, A. (2019) Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America. Thames and Hudson Ltd. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1594690

Rössler, P. (2014) The Bauhaus and Public Relations: Communication in a Permanent State of Crisis. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1662905 

Schuldenfrei, R. (2018) Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933. Princeton University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/740138  

Schulze, F. and Windhorst, E. (2012) Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, New and Revised Edition. University of Chicago Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1850918 

Siebenbrodt, M. and Schöbe, L. (2015) Bauhaus. Parkstone International. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3733475  

Smith, T. (2013) “The Identity of Design as Intellectual Property,” in Saletnik, J. (ed.) Bauhaus Construct. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1606630 

Spaeth, D. (2014) "Introduction," Inside the Bauhaus. Architectural Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1899604

Trimingham, M. (2017) The Theatre of the Bauhaus. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1486037
Wingler, H. M. (1969) The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. MIT Press. Available at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262730471/bauhaus/

Images

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1922) K VII [Oil, paint, and graphite on canvas] Tate Modern, London, England.

(Photographed by Sailko, 2016, Wikimedia Commons)

Gropius, W. (1925) Bauhaus Dessau. Dessau, Halle, Germany. (Photographed by Allan T. Kohl, 2003, Flickr)