Collection: Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was the German design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969) in Weimar on 1 April 1919. The school moved to Dessau in 1925, transferred to Berlin in 1932, and was closed under National Socialist pressure in April 1933. Its programme integrated fine art, craft, and industrial design under a unified workshop pedagogy, with the explicit goal of producing objects, buildings, and graphics suited to modern industrial society. The Vorkurs preliminary course, taught successively by Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers, set the pedagogical foundation.

The faculty included some of the period's most influential figures. Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) taught the wall painting workshop and lectured on form theory; Paul Klee (1879–1940) taught the bookbinding and stained glass workshops; Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) led printmaking; Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943) directed the theatre workshop and produced the Triadic Ballet; Gunta Stölzl ran the weaving workshop. Marcel Breuer developed the tubular steel chair in 1925; Anni Albers reorganised textile production. Hannes Meyer directed the school from 1928 to 1930, succeeded by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe until the closure.