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| Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model |
Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model
July 22 —October 4, 2009
Martin-Gropius-Bau
Niederkirchnerstrasse 7
Berlin D-10963
90 years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. It existed for only 14 years, but it became the most important school of modernity. With Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Adolf Meyer, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Hinnerk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Lothar Schreyer and Gunta Stölzl, a faculty with an international reputation worked under the direction of Walter Gropius (1919-1928), Hannes Meyer (1928-1930) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930-1933) at the Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus is Germany’s most successful contribution to international art and culture of modernity in the early 20th century. More than 75 years after it was closed in Berlin, the reputation of this inter-disciplinary school for architecture, design, visual and performing arts that moved to Dessau in 1925 continues to be as internationally significant as ever. The vibrancy and impact of the Bauhaus during its existence and after its dissolution in 1933 demonstrate that although the Bauhaus, as a laboratory and workshop of modernity, was destroyed by a deliberate political act, it was exactly that circumstance that enabled it to unfurl its global influence – history’s irony.
Some 1,000 examples of the work of its students and teachers are exhibited in "Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model," which opened on 22 July in the Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall as the biggest-ever Bauhaus retrospective. The location is doubly significant, not only because its architect (and namesake) was a great-uncle of Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus’s founding director, but because of its geography. The building stands beside what were once the headquarters of the Gestapo, the Nazi’s secret police force, and the Berlin Wall that divided the city — and Germany — for decades.
As the Bauhaus’s history is steeped in German politics, it seems apt that it should be welcomed back to Berlin with such aplomb. The school opened in 1919, the year that the Weimar Republic introduced democracy to Germany, and ended in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. The remnants of the Bauhaus were then divided between three archives: two in its first homes of Weimar and Dessau, on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain, and a third on the other side in West Berlin.
This new retrospective marks both the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Bauhaus’s 90th birthday.
Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model is presented in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which will celebrate its 80th birthday with the exhibition Bauhaus 1919 – 1933: Workshops for Modernity directly following the Berlin presentation. |
The “Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model” exhibit in Berlin. Photo: Jirka Jansch
A model of the Fagus Shoe Factory by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer at the“Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model” exhibit.
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