The textile workshop, especially under the direction of designer and weaver Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983), created abstract textiles suitable for use in Bauhaus environments. Students studied color theory and design as well as the technical aspects of weaving. Stölzl encouraged experimentation with unorthodox materials, including cellophane, fiberglass, and metal. Fabrics from the weaving workshop were commercially successful, providing vital and much needed funds to the Bauhaus. The studio’s textiles, along with architectural wall painting, adorned the interiors of Bauhaus buildings, providing polychromatic yet abstract visual interest to these somewhat severe spaces. While the weaving studio was primarily comprised of women, this was in part due to the fact that they were discouraged from participating in other areas. The workshop trained a number of prominent textile artists, including Anni Albers (1899–1994), who continued to create and write about modernist textiles throughout her life. The book 50 Bauhaus Icons You Should Know by Josef Strasser is an ideal option for those looking to gain an introduction to Bauhaus. Whether you’re a design aficionado or a casual reader intrigued by the legacy of Bauhaus, these top three books will undoubtedly enrich your knowledge and understanding of this influential movement. The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living.

Griffith Winton, Alexandra. “The Bauhaus, 1919–1933.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm (August 2007; last revised October 2016) Further Reading Comprised of over 120 colour images, this book sees photographer Hans Engels capture the surviving Bauhaus buildings in European cities like Barcelona, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna.Weekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Awards

Written in biographic style, the book explains the group's unswerving focus on creating art and architecture. The book “50 Bauhaus Icons You Should Know” by Josef Strasser serves as a perfect introduction to Bauhaus, as it features 100 color illustrations and 50 non-color ones, chronicling the works of several masters like Albers, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, and Klee. From the Publisher. One of the most widely read books on modern design, Nikolaus Pevsner’s landmark work today remains as stimulating as it was when first published in 1936. This expanded edition of Pioneers of Modern Design provides Pevsner’s original text along with significant new and updated information, enhancing Pevsner’s illuminating account of the roots of Modernism. The book now offers many beautiful color illustrations; biographies and bibliographies of all major figures; illustrated short essays on key themes, movements, and individuals; a critique of Pevsner’s analysis from today’s perspective; examples of works after 1914 (where the original study ended); a biography detailing Pevsner’s life and achievements; and much more.From the Publisher. Nicholas Fox Weber, for thirty-four years head of the Albers Foundation, spent many years with Anni and Josef Albers, the only husband-and-wife artistic pair at the Bauhaus (she was a textile artist; he was a professor and an artist, in glass, metal, wood, and photography). The Alberses told him their own stories and described life at the Bauhaus with their fellow artists and teachers, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as with these figures' lesser-known wives and girlfriends. Soon after Gropius arrived in the US, he urged Breuer to follow him across the pond: “It’s fantastic here! Don’t tell the English but we are ecstatic that we have escaped the land of fog and of psychological nightmares… Here people are open and free and I believe you would have a very broad field here.” In the US, Breuer and Gropius briefly formed a business partnership, co-designing the Alan I W Frank House of 1939-1940 in Pittsburgh. Exploring the fascinating world of Bauhaus can be an enriching and potentially overwhelming experience. With 28 insightful books on Bauhaus reviewed in this article, it can be hard to decide where to start. Fear not, as we have condensed the list into the top three expert recommendations to guide you on your Bauhaus journey.

Schlemmer was known for focusing all his disciplines on the human body. His most famous work, 1922’s The Triadic Ballet, Schlemmer transformed his dancers in kinetic sculptures by costuming them in geometric shapes made from metal, cardboard and wood. Joseph Albers The new introduction focuses on the centenary, and claims that 100 years later, Bauhaus continues to inspire the work of designers in a wide range of fields, as well as teaching methods. It says that the “holistic, often utopian aspiration to reform all aspects of life” seen at the Bauhaus school “has lost none of its fascination today”. For design theory enthusiasts, The ABC’s of Bauhaus: The Bauhaus and Design Theory”by Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller is a good option. Gropius at home with his second wife, Ise, in 1950. Photograph: Ann Rosener/The Life Images Collection/Getty Images One of only a few women on the Bauhaus faculty during the 1920s, Marianne Brandt was responsible for creating many of the functional objects that we now recognize as quintessential works of modernist design. Born in Chemnitz, Germany in 1893 as Marianne Liebe, she enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1923, and began studying under Moholy-Nagy in the metal workshop in 1924, becoming the first woman admitted into his studio. Brandt made the prototype for her teapot the same year, subsequently producing six other prototypes, though the design was never marketed commercially. Standing at only three inches tall - a little larger than a teacup - the teapot was intended to create a concentrated tea extract. which could then be diluted with hot water to whatever strength was desired.While readers should delve into the book themselves to discover the school’s methods and practices in-depth, one classic Bauhaus teaching Droste does reveal is the need for designers or artists to “create art as a Gemeinschafts project”, which means to work collaboratively or as part of a community. The idea of an immersive artistic environment was highly attractive to the second-wave avant-garde movements of the 1960s, and sure enough, Moholy-Nagy's Light Prop received great interest during that decade. It was seen as a forerunner of the Kinetic Art movement which was by that point in full swing, and was included in several exhibitions of kinetic sculpture, as well as being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1968. Two working replicas of the Light Prop were made in 1970, and the Tate constructed a third in 2006. The work therefore indicates the influence which Bauhaus themes and forms would have on the modern spirit of later avant-garde art movements. The updated version of the book contains around 250 new images with new captions, updated biographies of key people from the Bauhaus alongside bibliographies of their work and a new foreword. Enjoy diving into the remarkable history, design theories, and political intricacies of the Bauhaus world, and get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey.

Under his leadership, the school moved during a struggle for survival with Germany’s ever-encroaching National Socialist Party, whose interference demanded experimental work be toned down as it seized control of the school. End of the Bauhaus Although the Bauhaus abandoned many aspects of traditional fine-arts education, it was deeply concerned with intellectual and theoretical approaches to its subject. Various aspects of artistic and design pedagogy were fused, and the hierarchy of the arts which had stood in place during the Renaissance was levelled out: the practical crafts - architecture and interior design, textiles and woodwork - were placed on a par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting. Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. Bauhausbücher 9: Wassily Kandinsky „Punkt und Linie zur Fläche. Beitrag zur Analyse der malerischen Elemente“, 1926. Paul Klee joined the school’s faculty in 1920, bringing with him a fascination with the art and artistic processes of non-Western cultures and children that he melded with a geometric, often scientific approach to abstract painting. His tenure at Bauhaus saw him create works that are lauded for their poetry and humor, as with his 1922 painting, Dance, Monster, to My Soft Song!For those after some wider reading on Bauhaus, this photography book takes readers to Cape Cod, where Walter Gropius and his wife Ise hosted several of the movement's masters like Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Bayer during the summer of 1937. Covering everything from the Weimar Republic to Gropius' departure as director, the recently-revised book now also includes a chapter discussing the movement's impact on Russia.