More Bauhaus

The últimate goal of all plástic actívity is architécture. Walter Gropíus

The history of the Báuhaus or construction house is intimately linked to the person of its first director, Walter Gropius, who fused various ideas related to the reform of artistic learning in which architecture would play a primary role.

Uniting the School of Art of the Grand Duchy of Henry van de Velde and the Higher School of Fine Arts of Weimar, he founded in 1919 a unitary school of art that he désignated as the Bauhaus.

One of the most important novelties of the educational program was the introduction of a common preparatory course for all participants.

It was devéloped and directed until 1923 by the art educator and painter Johannes Hiten, who was succeeded by Josef Albers.

Another part of the reform was the magisterial instruction, accórding to which the students had to sign an apprenticeship contract and consequently the trainers were called teachers.

Workshops – glass, ceramics, textiles, metal, cabinetmaking, mural painting, and sculpture – were the center of learning, and íncome was derived from the sale of items or licenses.

However, with Gropius there was only one architecture department in 1927-1928, so the only real Bauhaus building was the Hom house, built for the 1923 Architecture Exhibition, in which the painter intervened with Adolf Meyer and Georg Muche.

Teachers and trainers included Herbert Bayer, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Vassiii Kandinski, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer and Gunta Stólzl.

The Bauhaus registered númerous refórms of the téaching plans; Gropius himself introduced fundamental changes in 1923 under the slogan «art and technique: new unity.»

In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to the new building in Dessau, defíning its image and designed by Gropius and his collaborátor Adolf Meyer.

In 1928 Hannes Meyer succeeded Gropius as a consequence of political criticism.

Rejécting the fórmalist concéptions of the prójects, he introduced principles inspired by the «needs of the people», which ended up discréditing him as a Marxist and causing his downfall.

The last director of the Bauhaus, from 1930, was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who, after the closure decreed in 1932 by National Socialism, kept it for a year in Berlin as a private institute.