Celebrating 100 years of Bauhaus
One hundred years ago, the influential Bauhaus art movement was founded in Germany. Numerous museums and institutions are marking the centenary across the country.
Weimar: Home of Bauhaus
Precisely 100 years after Bauhaus was established, a brand new museum dedicated to Bauhaus opened, where the design revolution began: in Weimar by the founder Walter Gropius, an architect.
The permanent exhibition “The Bauhaus Comes from Weimar” explores the issues, ideas and design proposals at the core of Bauhaus, as well as its significance in our life today.
Other sites include the Bauhaus University, designed by Henry van der Velde, where world-famous artists such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Lászlo Moholy-Nagy lectured. The “Haus am Horn” show house, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
Dessau: Heyday of Bauhaus
Dessau became the new location for Bauhaus in 1925. The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, designed by Gropius and opened in 1926, is a milestone of modern architecture.
Other buildings that have been built according to Gropius’ designs between 1925–32 are the Masters’ Houses, the Dessau-Törten Housing Estate, the Kornhaus, House Fieger, the Steel House and the Employment Office.
The Bauhaus Museum Dessau is being constructed for the centenary and is set to open in September 2019. It will provide ample space to display the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, which is the second-largest collection worldwide on the theme of the Bauhaus. The first exhibition “Versuchstätte Bauhaus: The Collection” will tell the narrative of the famous school in Dessau, and will open on 8 September 2019.
Berlin: the largest Bauhaus collection
Berlin was the last stage of the Bauhaus movement. It was shut down by the National Socialists in 1933, only 14 years after it was founded. It is here, though that the largest collection of original objects in the world can be found.
The Bauhaus Archiv, which houses this collection is being renovated and extended, but a temporary bauhaus-archiv can be found in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district.
The exhibition “Original Bauhaus: The Centenary Exhibition” will open on 6 September at the Berlinische Galerie and will present “famous, familiar and forgotten Bauhaus originals and recounting the history behind the objects. It will display art and design from the Bauhaus-Archiv’s collection, exceptional loans from international collections and artistic positions which take a new look at the Bauhaus legacy.”
Frankfurt: pioneering urban architecture
Frankfurt was one of the cities Gropius considered moving the Bauhaus school to when they had to relocate from Weimar. While the choice fell on Dessau, Frankfurt fully embraced modernist principles of architecture and town planning. “In the 1920s, Frankfurt\Main became the centre of an unprecedented programme of architectural and cultural renewal that would enter the history books under the name of “New Frankfurt”. Under Lord Mayor Ludwig Landmann and his Municipal Building Councilor Ernst May, Modernism as a way of life took shape. The heart of the project was a model housing and urban development programme of international significance.”
The exhibition “NEW HUMAN, NEW HOUSING — ARCHITECTURE OF THE NEW FRANKFURT 1925–1933” is on at the German Architecture Museum from 23 March to 18 August.
Stuttgart: Weissenhof City
The renowned Weissenhof Estate was built in 1927 by the “Deutscher Werkbund” (German Association of Craftsmen) under the direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It has been inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the 17 sites comprising “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier” in 2016.
Together with Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie international artists will mark the Bauhaus centenary by “looking for traces of the forward-thinking institution and its imagined future that is now our present.”
The Weissenhof City exhibition starts on 7 June.
For more events please visit the Bauhaus 100 website.
