Postcard from Berlin, 6. (Bauhaus, Dessau)

Day 6 - the last full day in Berlin - was a train ride to Dessau to see the Bauhaus*. Dessau is about 100km south west of Berlin and the train from Alexanderplatz took the best part of 2 hours. It was, however, only a few minutes walk from Dessau station to the Bauhaus itself. It was exciting to walk up to, and into, the buildings so familiar from art history books. Walter Gropius' 1926 buildings were first restored in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. Today the buildings appear as fresh as they must have been nearly 80 years ago. They are managed by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
We were given a guided tour of Die Meisterhäuser - the houses designed by Gropius for himself and the teaching staff, the 'masters'. Our German guide was diffident about conducting the tour in English but was excellent.  The masters occupied semi-detached house: in 1926, these included László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Each half of the semi-detached houses are mirror images of the other, rotated by 90°. The houses were designed with consideration for efficiency both in construction (standardised, pre-fabricated blocks) and day to day living. It was interesting, and surprising, to see the rich use of colour both inside and out.
The Director's house did not survive the war - it has now been restored, not as a replica of the original but as an 'interpretation' by Bruno Fioretti Marquez. (See feature in dezeen and article by Philip Oltermann.)

Walter Gropius, The Feininger House, 1926

Stairwell in House Kandinsky (restored 2003)

The Gropius House (original 1925/6), interpreted by Bruno Fioretti Marquez, 2014

The tour of the Bauhaus building, itself, was equally interesting and included seeing the Director's office and a student's studio-bedroom.

*Thanks to Sue, Ian, Dawn, Martin and Deb for organising the visit.

Bauhaus: Art as Life - Barbican

Erich Consemüller, Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius sitting on the B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer and wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and dress fabric by Beyer, c.1927

Bauhaus: Art as Life is at the Barbican until 12 August. The exhibition is a substantial examination of the work and ideas of the world's most famous art school. The Bauhaus existed for a mere 14 years, 1919-33, as a bold utopian creative community in the turbulence of pre Nazi Germany. Led, initially, by the visionary architect and educator Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus brought together an extraordinary group of Modernist artists and designers, including, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer and many others; collectively they left a definitive mark on the art, architecture and design of the twentieth century.

Adrian Searle reflects on the state of art education today in his review of the exhibition: 

There is a lesson here about much contemporary art education: the lack of common purpose, the overweening bureaucracy, the disillusionment and grasping for fees, the box-ticking lostness of so much of it. The Bauhaus had a sense of common purpose and shared ideas, of arguments that meant something, of making things up as you go along. And so much that it gave us was practical, and a delight to the eye. No wonder the National Socialists wanted it closed.

Read Searle's review and articles by Fiona MacCarthy and Rowan Moore. 

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925

Herbert Bayer, Kandinsky zum 60. Geburtstag, 1926

Marianne Brandt, Tea pot, 1925

László Moholy-Nagy, Prospectus cover for14 Bauhausbücher (14 Bauhaus Books), 1928

Herbert Bayer, Architektur Lichtbilder Vortrag Professor Hans Poelzig, 1926

Josef Albers, Factory A, 1925/26

Farkas Molnár, Entwurf für ein Einfamilienhaus, 1922

Marcel Breuer, Wassily chair, 1925

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925