Josef Albers was a German artist whose art laid the foundation of one of the most influential styles of the 20th century. Albers’s roots lead back to a town named Bottrop in Westphalia, Germany. From the time of 1908 to 1913, Albers worked as an educator in his town. In 1918, Albers got his premier public commission, Rosa mystica ora pro nobis, which was a stained-glass window for a local place of worship. He studied art in many major German cities before becoming a student at the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus school in 1920. Despite the fact that Albers was also studying painting, his preferred method was to make stained glass. He joined the ranks in 1922, and used his preferred medium as a part of architecture and as a form of art.
A man named Walter Gropius, who was the founder of the Bauhaus, requested Albers to teach new students, due to Albers’s extensive knowledge and background. Albers quickly rose through the ranks, and he became a professor in the year of 1925, the same year that the Bauhaus had moved to the city of Dessau. During his time there, he married Anni Albers, a stu...
Marcel Breuer, born in the early 1900’s in Hungary, was one of the first and youngest students to learn under the Bauhaus style, taught by Walter Gropius. Breuer started his career designing furniture, using tubular, or “handle bar like”, steel (Dodd, Mead, and Company 32). One of the most popular of these furniture designs was his Club Chair B3designed in 1922. In the 1930’s, Breuer moved to the United States to teach and practice architecture. In the 1950’s, he received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Between 1960 and 1980, Breuer was honored with several honorary doctoral degrees from several universities around the world. After retiring in 1976 due to poor health, Breuer was awarded several other awards, and his work was displayed in exhibitions around the world. Breuer died on July 2nd, 1981, at the age of 79 (Marcel Breuer Associates 6).
Alfred Adler was born in 1870. He published his first major psychology book, Understanding Human Nature, in 1959. Alder has a passionate concern for the common person and he was very outspoken about child-rearing practices, school reforms, and prejudices that resulted in conflict. Alder created 32 child guidance clinics in the Vienna public schools and began training teachers, social workers, physicians, and other professionals. Alder believes that where we are striving to go is more important than where we have come from. He saw humans as both the c...
Lie spent much of his youth studying art in Paris and Norway (Rollins 2). While studying in Paris, Lie found great inspiration from the works of Impressionist artist, Claude Monet. After returning from Paris, Lie moved to New York city, giving art classes for aspiring young artists (Caldwell 2). During this period, Lie painted Dusk on Lower Broadway, and through this piece, one is able to see the heavy influence of Impressionism and the techniques of Claude Monet reflected
Joe Mielziner, born in Paris in 1901, was a famous American scenic and lighting designer considered "The most successful set designer of the Golden era of Broadway". Throughout his work he created different versions of sets with the use of simple inexpensive materials, and few props, while still staying as realistic as possible even when constricted by small stages. Mielziner was the leader of a new artistic movement in scenic design called "selective realism". The well known piece by Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, was represented many times with Mielziner's stage design which was said to be the most faithful representation for this play. In fact the 2012 revival of Death of a Salesman's set was said by Mike Nichols to be "intimately connected with the way the play develops. I have never seen anything near as good in any of the productions of 'Salesman' because it is everything and nothing." This play with this set design was revived 4 times: once in June 1975 in the Circle in the square Theater running for 71 performances, once in March 1984 at the Broadhurst Theater running a total of 185 performances, then in 1999 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater running for 274 performances and finally in 2012 at the Ethel Barrymore theater in a limited run of 16 weeks: it was a successful play and a successful representation. Joe Mielziner spent a lot of time creating and designing his set for one sole purpose: that of representing in a detailed way the play.
“He was born soon after 770 and was given his father’s name. The family sent him as a boy to the great monastery of Fulda, where he was educated, and made a grant to the abbey of land which they held in the Maingau. In the 790’s he was sent by the abbot to Charlemagne’s court, where he became the pupil of Yorkshireman Alcuin who had gone to teach there, and succeeded him as teacher at the palace school.”
Himmler graduated in July 1919. He majored in agriculture at the Technical University in Munich. This is where he combined a German-nationalist student group and began to read intensely in the racist-nationalist literature popular on the essential right of the interwar German political field. By the time he received his university degree in August 1922, Himmler was a nationalist and a political activist. Forced to take a job in a manure-processing factory near Munich, Himmler made contact with t...
Albert Speer was born on the 19th of March, 1905, in Manheim, Germany into a wealth family. Although Speer was quite the mathematician, his parents pushed him to embrace architecture. He graduated from the Institute of Technology in Berlin in 1927 and began his career working as Heinrich Tessenow’s part time assistant lecturer. Whilst Tessenow never agreed with Nazism, many of his students did. Some of the students invited Speer to a Nazi Rally projected towards students at which Hitler was speaking. This sparked his interest with the party and from this there were many events that complimented each other in assisting Speer’s growth and development alongside the Nazi Party. The main purpose of this essay is to describe three significant factors that results in the prominence of Albert Speer as a historical personality. These factors include his early work for the Nazi’s, his architectural successes within the Reich and the deaths of fellow Nazi men Paul Troost and Fritz Todt which eventually was the final factor that led to Speer becoming Minister for Armaments and Munition.
Renner was born in 1878, and grew up in Wernigerode, Germany. He was a teacher, graphic designer, type designer and author. In 1926 he was a director at Munich’s Graphic Arts College, Later in 1927 he went on to become the director of the Munich Master Printers in 1927. He then wrote a book called Typography as Art in1922, he also wrote cultural Bolshevism in 1932.The Cultural Bolshevism later caused him dismissal from his directorship, because of the National Socialist Party. In his early studies Renner went on to explore different aspects of letterform that varied from the traditional roman form.
Kinney, Arthur F. "Auden, Bruegel, and 'Musee des Beaux Arts'" 7: 529-531. EBSCOhost. Homer Babbidge Library, Storrs. 11 Dec. 2005. Keywords: Auden + Musee Des Beaux Arts.
Bayer, Herbert, Walter Gropius, and Ise Gropius. Bauhaus, 1919-1928. Boston: Charles T. Branford, 1952. Print.
Griffith Wilson, Alexandra. “The Bauhaus 1919-1933.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. N.D. Web. 9 Feb. 2014. .
Josef Albers was a well-known and influential artist of the twentieth century. He was known for his use of vivid colors and interesting and abstract shapes. He was instrumental in ushering in the Modernist movement as he was a teacher to many of the great artists of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963, Josef Albers released a book surrounding a series of paintings he did, The Interaction of Color. This book was crucial when it came to art education and various applications in his and his student’s works. His final series was his Homage to a Square that only used squares and rectangles with varying colors to demonstrate spatial relationships between the shapes and the colors. Albers use of shape and color, particularly in his Homage to the Square
The German Pavilion, more commonly known as the Barcelona Pavilion, is one of the most recognizable buildings of the modern period during the early 20th century. It encapsulates every element of modern architecture in one structure. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the fathers of modern architecture, was the architect of this beautiful building. In this essay I will explore how Mies impacted the modern movement in architecture through his groundbreaking ideas, using the Barcelona Pavilion as a case study. The German Pavilion was designed in 1929 for the International Exposition in Barcelona.
Le Corbusier was born in a small town in the mountainous Swiss Jura region, since the 18th century the world's centre of precision watchmaking. All his life he was marked by the harshness of these surroundings and the puritanism of a Protestant environment. At 13 years of age, Le Corbusier left primary school to learn the enamelling and engraving of watch faces, his father's trade, at the École des Arts Décoratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds. There, Charles L'Eplattenier, whom Le Corbusier later called his only teacher, taught him art history, drawing, and the naturalist aesthetics of Art Nouveau.
At age 13 Le Corbusier had finished and left grade school to move on to attend Arts Decoratifs in his home city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Here a young Le would learn the art of facing watches, just like his father, through enameling and engraving. While attending Arts Decoratifs Le Corbusier was under the influence of his teacher L’ Eplattenier who he would later refer to as his “Master” and only teacher. Under L’ Eplattenier’s instruction a young Le Corbusier would learn the history of art, drawing and the naturalistic attributes of newly developed art. With his in depth teachings of art Le Corbusier soon abandoned his previous career of watch making and further continued his education in decoration and art intending to eventually...