Lineage of German Design

What Max Bill and Swiss formative thought brought to Germany

In 1927, a 19-year-old Swiss youth enrolled in the Bauhaus in Dessau. He studied painting under Klee and Kandinsky, and material and composition under Moholy-Nagy. When he returned to Zurich two ye...

The Ulm School of Design – What it inherited from the Bauhaus and what it discarded

In September 1953, a school opened in Ulm, a city in southern Germany. One of its founders, Inge Aicher-Scholl, was a survivor of the "White Rose" resistance movement, whose brother and sister had ...

The Legacy of Bauhaus: 100 Years of Influence on Modern Design

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 and closed in 1933, a school that existed for 14 years. The total number of students who attended was approximately 1,300. Yet its influence has been incomparably br...

Bauhaus and Soviet Constructivism: Two Intersecting Avant-Gardes

In the 1920s, two "avant-gardes" co-existed in Europe. One was the Bauhaus in Germany. The other was Constructivism in Soviet Russia. Both emerged around the same time, posed almost identical quest...

Why Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky Were at the Bauhaus

In 1921, the Swiss painter Paul Klee joined the Bauhaus. The following year, in 1922, Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer of abstract painting from Russia, also joined. Both were already world-renowned ar...

Exile and Dissemination of the Bauhaus: How Its Ideas Spread Around the World

In July 1933, on the night the Bauhaus resolved its voluntary dissolution, the faculty considered their respective destinations. Remaining in Germany was no longer an option.Yet, ironically, the Na...

Nazism and the Bauhaus—The Real Reason Behind Its Closure

On July 20, 1933, all faculty members gathered at the Bauhaus in Berlin and held a vote. There was only one item on the agenda: whether to close the school themselves. The dissolution was decided b...

Bauhaus Material Experiments: Why They Chose "Unadorned"

When the Bauhaus is said to have "rejected ornamentation," it is often misunderstood. It was not about wanting things to look simple, nor was it about following aesthetic trends. The Bauhaus reject...

Marianne Brandt: The Woman Who Conquered the Bauhaus Metal Workshop

In 1924, a woman at the Bauhaus in Weimar created a teapot. This small vessel, about 22 centimeters in diameter, featured a spherical body, a black semi-circular handle, and a simple cross-shaped b...

The Bauhaus Metal Workshop Revolution: How a Teapot Changed Design History

Among the many workshops at the Bauhaus, the Metal Workshop (Metallwerkstatt) underwent the most dramatic transformation. Initially established in 1919 as a traditional silversmithy, it evolved int...