Bauhaus

Geniuses and Gesamtkunstwerk

The most famous art school of modernism

Between two world wars, in just 14 years, the Bauhaus changed modernism. Guided by utopian ideals, the school of art and design brought together art, craft and technology and applied this holistic concept to painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textile design, pottery, theater and installations.

The artists' collective with an external impact was also a close personal community. The school was founded by Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and its members included Josef and Anni Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stölzl, Marianne Brandt and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. At all three successive locations of the school in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, there was a lively creative exchange between the students and teachers, who all cultivated different artistic styles and preferences, but were united in their idealism and striving for a "total work of art".

This volume celebrates the innovative power of the Bauhaus movement, which fueled modernism with its avant-garde ideas and focused on comprehensive freedom of artistic expression and the combination of function and aesthetics in art education.

The author

Magdalena Droste studied art history and literature in Aachen and Marburg. From 1980 she worked at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, after which she was Professor of Art History at the BTU Cottbus. She has been responsible for numerous exhibitions and publications on all Bauhaus themes and artists.

The editor

Peter Gössel runs an agency for museum and exhibition design. He has published monographs on Julius Shulman, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner and Richard Neutra for TASCHEN, as well as several architecture titles in the small series.