Bauhaus Research

The central point for these new designs for living was the famous German design school – the Bauhaus.

At this school many of the artists and designers, who were a part of Modernism before the war, would teach. The expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky was one of them.

Kandinsky would look at his previous experiments and start to analyse what he was doing – attempting to develop a more formal visual language.

Kandinsky’s colleague from the Blue Rider group also taught at the Bauhaus.

Paul Klee is an interesting artist who is difficult to categorise.

He first makes his name as an expressionist but then teaches at the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was set up following the First World War.

The first director of the Design school would be the architect Walter Gropius, who before the war had already designed modernist buildings.

The Bauhaus opened in 1919 with Gropius in charge.

Initially it is the coming together of two art schools.

It was unusual to have an architect lead an art school.

The famous Bauhaus buildings were designed by Gropius and still stand today. The new building looks more like a functional factory rather than an old-fashioned art academy.

At the beginning the Bauhaus had a traditional aesthetic.

Many of the staff were expressionists and so had a craft-based, subjective approach to design.

This early period produced many problems until the school settled into the format that we are more familiar with.

The type of design that we have become accustomed to in relation to the Bauhaus is the clean, modern, geometric, functional objects and spaces.

The Bauhaus is innovatory in a number of ways.

In relation to design it does set down the framework that we now work within.

It is also forward looking in how designers were taught.

Colour theory would be developed by Itten and Kandinsky. Kandinsky joined the Bauhaus in 1922. His book ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ (1912) had already explored colour theories.

He was moving towards a visual language which, he believed, would eventually communicate feelings more clearly than could a verbal language.