Lecture 7

The Bauhaus and the 20th-Century

Modern Movement

Rudolf Petersdorff
Department Store,
Breslau, 1927/28

Night view of another

Schocken Department
Store by Mendelson
note the effects of his
Lichtarchitektur (light
architecture) and the
purposely achieved
transparency of the
floor-to-ceiling shop
windows on the
ground floor

Piet Mondrian, Dutch Modernist painter, 1872-1944

An important contributor to 20th-century abstract painting and the Dutch De Stijl

movement. His journey from realis m to Impressionism to abstraction represents a major
moment in the evolution of 20th-century artistic expression in painting. Contemporary
Photograph, Live Oak very similar to Mondrians early hyper-realist graphite sketches
of trees and views of the forest executed in the 1890s

Piet Mondrian, Red Trees, 1908

Piet Mondrian (Dutch), Study of Trees, 1913

Piet Mondrian, The Red Tree, 1910

Piet Mondrian, The Red Tree, 1910, detail

Piet Mondrian, The Grey Tree, 1911

Piet Mondrian, Trees, 1912

Piet Mondrian, Flowering Tree, 1912

Piet Mondrian, Line and Color, 1915

Piet Mondrian, Composition, 1915

Piet Mondrian, Composition, 1915

Piet Mondrian, Composition, 1921

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1943

Theo van Doesburg, Project for the Cinema Dance Hall,

perspective view, Strasbourg, France, 1928

Theo van Doesburg, Cinema Dance Hall, Strasbourg, France, 1928

Gerritt Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht, 1924

Gerritt Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht (Holland), 1924, exterior view

Gerritt Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht, 1924, ground floor plan

Gerritt Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht, 1924, second floor plan (note
retractable partitions)

Gerritt Rietveld,
Schroeder House,
Utrecht, 1924,
interior perspective
view

Gerritt Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht, 1924, interior view

Gerritt Rietveld, table and chair, 1924

Mondrian composition, Rietveld Chair, Schroeder House

interior perspective view

Walter Gropius in Weimar, Dessau, and at Harvard (1919;

1926; 1960)

Lyonel
Feininger,
(Church at)
Gelmeroda XII

Paul Klee, Small squares and pine tree, approximately

1922

Wassily Kandinsky, Fairy Tale, 1905, and Untitled, 1930

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Johannes Itten,
Swiss painter
and devotee of
religious
mysticism as a
basis for
individual
liberation and
creativity,
shown here with
his color wheel
for teaching
color theory

Johannes Itten design used as a watch face, Mondaine

Company, Switzerland, 2000

A woodcut of a
cathedral, by L yonel
Feininger, illustrated
the four page
Bauhaus Manifesto.
Beams of light
converging upon the
cathedrals three
spires representing
the three arts;
architecture, sculpture
and painting

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Walter Gropius, diagram of Bauhaus curriculum, 1919,

from outside to inside the circle, or from introductory
course to mastery of a craft, to art, to architecture

Walter Gropius, diagram of Bauhaus curriculum, 1919, from

outside to inside the circle, or from introductory course to
mastery of a craft, to art, to architecture

Josef Albers, student work for the Bauhaus introductory

course, watercolor on paper, 1922

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"In visual perception, a color is

almost never seen as it really is- as
it physically is. This fact makes
color the most relative medium in
art."
- Josef Albers
Top center, Annie Albers, Bauhaus
carpet design, 1923

Anni Albers, wall hanging from Bauhaus weaving

workshop, 1923; Josef Albers, set of nesting tables,
Bauhaus wood workshops, 1926

Joost Schmidt, Bauhaus student, design of a chess set in

which the design of each piece contains information about
its movement according to the rules of the game; birch,
ebony, executed in Bauhaus workshop (1923)

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Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Bauhaus lamp from metal w orkshop, Dessau, 1928;

Marianne Brandt, Tea-e xtract pot, 1924, Brass, silver, ebony

Gropius, design for a door handle, 1923;

Mies van der Rohe, cantile vered chair using
metal tubing, 1928

Laszlo MoholyNagy, Forms in

Space, 1924

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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space Modulator, 1922-1930

Walter Gropius,
shown with his
design (with
Adolf Me yer),
Competition
Design for the
Chicago Tribune
Tower, 1922

Walter Gropius and Adolf Me yer,

1922 Competition Design for the
Chicago Tribune Tower (below, the
winning design by John Mead Howells
and Raymond Mead and Hood , as
completed in 1925)

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Burnham, Flatiron building, 1902 and Lebrun, Met Life Tower, 1909

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus building, Dessau, Germany, 1926, aerial view

visit: http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/history.asp?p=bauhaus

Below: Walter Gropius, Bauhaus building, Dessau, Germany, aerial view today.
Visit: http://www.bauhausdessau.de/en/history.asp?p=bauhaus

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Dessau-Bauhaus school, designed by Gropius, 1926

1924-25 Bauhaus Building, Dessau

Gropius, Bauhaus building plan, Dessau, 1925-26

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3-D computer model from year 2000 showing Bauhaus building and its
distribution of functions (Prellerhaus = student dormitory tower)

Gropiuss Bauhaus plan (1926) compared to Palladios Villa

Rotunda in Vicenza, Italy (1550)

Gropius: Bauhaus Master's House (top: Gropius house; bottom: house for
Lyonel Feininger), Dessau, 1926

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Walter Gropius, Torten

housing estate, Dessau,
1926-30

Josef Albers, Example of Bauhaus typography, 1925

Hannes Me yer, Project for the

League fo Nations competition,
1927, Geneva, a xonometric view
Marianne Brandt, table lamp, 1929,
fulfilling dictum that
form = function x economy

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Iwao Yamawaki,
Attack on the
Bauhaus,
collage, 1932

Walter Gropius, Gropius house, Lincoln, Mass., 1938

Walter Gropius/The Architects Collaborative, Harkness Commons and

Graduate Center, Harvard Uni versity, 1950

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Ma x Bill, Hochschule fuer Gestaltung (Academy of Design), Ulm, 1956;

student-designed living pod, 1965; a radio for Braun Co. by Dieter
Rams, 1958; Tomas Maldonado, Lufthansa corporate image design

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Hans M.
Wingler (left)
and Walter
Gropius (right) Opening
ceremony of the
Bauhaus
Archi ve in
Darmstadt,
1961

The bauhausshop offers a

panorama of
design from
Bauhaus to
Contemporary.
The range
includes "icons"
of design such
as the Bauhaus
lamp or vases
by Al var Aalto,
but also
anonymous
items of
industrial
design.

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