The Rise And Fall Of The Bauhaus

10 Pages 2575 Words

“Mechanized work is lifeless, proper only to the lifeless machine… The solution depends on a change in the individual’s attitude toward his work, not on the betterment of his outward circumstances.” (Gropius)

Walter Gropius changed art and architecture forever the first day in April of the year 1919. (01) This was the time in which he felt an obligation to converge both the arts and crafts with the new industrial methods. He accomplished this when he took over the Art Academy in Weimer Germany established by the Grand Duke of Sachsen-Weimar. (02) During the next fourteen years, the school saw two more directors that may have had different ideals, but still maintained the original goals of the Bauhaus. (04) Its foundation was the first to achieve man’s effort to come to terms with technology and art. Though it may have been short lived, the Bauhaus did more than any other organization in the 19th and 20th centuries to reconcile man and his man-made environment.
In Germany during post World War I there were many disputes as to what was to be done in art and architecture. The theories were on the extreme sides of the spectrum, where on the one side were people who could not understand that the pre-war world was dead; on the other side they were determined to learn from the catastrophe. For these people the Bauhaus was a means to greatness, while the traditionalists were disgusted at its very existence. In Germany, and the rest of Europe for that matter, they were confident in their pursuit of the Exprssionism style during the early 20th century. Essentially, this was Romanticism, which is the experimentation of the artists expressing their individual views.
At the beginning of October 1907 a hundred architects, designers, factory owners, and friends of art met in Munich. Together they founded the 'Deutscher Werkbund'. Its aim was to improve the form and quality of utility wares. Werkbund had partly got its influences from ...