Bauhaus

The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919. Gropius felt that a new period of history had begun with the end of World War I, and wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era. It was largely subsidized by the Weimar Republic. In 1925 the school moved to Dessau, where the Bauhaus University[?] was built. It was moved again in 1932 to Berlin. Gropius was the head of the school throughout 1919-1928, followed by Hannes Meyer[?] and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The school was closed on the orders of the Nazi regime in 1933. The Nazis had been opposed to the Bauhaus throughout the 1920s, as had other right-wing political groups. The Bauhaus was considered by them to be a front for communists, especially because many Russian artists were involved with it. Nazi writers such as Wilhelm Frick and Alfred Rosenberg felt that the Bauhaus was "un-German," and did not approve of its modernist styles. However, the Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in western Europe and the United States in the following decades, as many of the artists involved were exiled under the Nazi regime.

It was mainly concerned with architecture, and often built affordable public housing for the Weimer government, but also dealt with other branches of art. The Bauhaus issued a magazine called "Bauhaus" and a series of books called "Bauhausbücher". Its head of printing and design was Herbert Bayer.

Inspired the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus which existed from 1953 to 1957

Some outstanding artists of the times were lecturers in Bauhaus :

• Vasily Kandinsky
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
• Paul Klee
• Lyonel Feininger

External links:

• Bauhaus Museum in Weimar (http://augentier.de/kusa/web/index.php/en/bau/allg/)