Walter Gropius and The Bauhaus Movement

1303 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Industrial revolution art

Simplicity vs. over simple?
The Bauhaus, meaning house of construction was the most influential art school that combined the fine arts and the crafts as one. The Bauhaus was a modernist movement founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius in Weimar Yet, the Memphis Group was a post modernist movement. Established by Ettore Sottsass, the Memphis Group was a group of Italian designers and architects. Founded in Milan in 1981, the group challenged the perception of ‘good design’ through ornamental pieces. The movements were both equally different in the way they approached design, however, with the same intent of social change.

The Bauhaus and Memphis Group movements were a huge influence in the design world. These movements had a particular aim, as well as being influenced by other art movements, they were able to create their own unique movement.

The English arts and crafts movement, modernism and constructivism were main influences of the Bauhaus. Walter Gropius idea was to merge these influences, to make the reigning principles of form and function. The idea that design is a service of the public, and a belief in the perfection and efficiency of geometry. [1] Gropius aim was then to bring artist and craftspeople together, in order to take on technological developments. It was evident that technology was the future and with the use of machines brought opportunities to mass-produce beautiful products for everyday use. The Bauhaus embraced the ‘machine aesthetic’ as artists began to create prototypes for industrial production, the designs were based on simple geometric shapes and primary colours. These designs were to be mass-produced using modern technology and were to be available to all people. [2]

Generally, the Bauhaus is well k...

... middle of paper ...

...e schools philosophy as ‘anit-german’. [15] In 1933 the Gestapo closed down the Berlin school. Staff and students left Berlin continuing to spread the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries, most fled to America where Bauhaus artist were more successful in spreading their designs. In contrast to the Bauhaus, the Memphis Group had no political involvement towards the movement. However the Memphis Group was conceived as a fad and form of ‘political’ statement that intended to shake the foundations of the design world, in order to break down the barriers between high and lower class design. Sottass had decided to end the group by 1988. [16]

Despite the fact that the Bauhaus school had only lasted fourteen years, there is no doubt that the Bauhaus and Memphis group movements have left their mark in the design world, making a huge impact on the world’s art today.

Show More
Related

  • Cleveland Museum of Art – Breuer Building

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Painting: Etude Golden Arrow by Edward Judd

    1619 Words  | 4 Pages

    Synchromism was the first American Avant Garde artistic movement started in early 20th century Paris by two expatriated artists from the United States, Morgan Russell of New York (1888-1953) & Stanton MacDonald-Wright of Virginia (1890-1973). Artists of the time were always working on new and inventive ways to show the importance of the movement. The two young artists met in Paris and established this movement on the influences of Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and the Post Impressionists movement, which is the idea of color superseding the importance of the subject. They were able to evolve these post-impressionist ideals by implementing the use of Musical Theory, which is a style in which music and sounds would define certain hues and shades in their painting to represent movement, emotion, and expression. Music can be broken down into elements like rhythm, form, and structure while the same can be done with art, and this style bridges the gap between the two disciplines. Russell and MacDonald-Wright incorporated Musical Theory into their artworks in a simi...

    Read More

  • Basquiat History

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    Neo-Expressionism, an art movement that developed in the 1970s, is characterized by its abandonment of “Minimalist restraint and Conceptual coolness. [It] offered violent feeling expressed through previously taboo means-including gestural paint handling and allegory” (Neo-Expressionism). Jean-Michel Basquiat, a well-known Neo-Expressionist painter, explored a multitude of themes that interested him. The most prevalent were issues on race, culture, and heritage. During his 27 years of life, he was able to accurately represent the everyday struggle of the average African-American male while reforming the art industry, defying and accepting stereotypes, and depicting touchy themes of race in his visual art.

    Read More

  • Cubist Movement: The Art Of Futurism

    443 Words  | 1 Pages

    violence and change. Artists who worked in traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and in an eclectic range of styles. Some people went with the movement while others opposed it. I enjoy the different types of eclectic movement in art such as the paintings, drawings and the designs. It was not until 1911 that a distinctive futurist style emerged and then it was a product of Cubist influence. Futurism was not immediately identified with a distinctive style. Futurists were fascinated by the problems of representing modern experience, and strived to have their paintings evoke all kinds of sensations and not merely those visible to the eye. Futurist art brings to mind noise, heat, and even smell of the metropolis.

    Read More

  • Art Deco Art History

    1830 Words  | 4 Pages

    Art Deco as an art mover has had a lot of influence in the history of arts and was under the influence of the past art movements and different cultures, the present lifestyle and the societies of the life changing World War I and II. In design Art Deco was glamorous and in style it was luxurious. Major influences were the styles of art and the French crafts of high standards, different cultures and avant-grade art. It wasn’t just a normal style that reflected adventure, entertainment and leisure but a highly enjoyed taste by all classes of people with different minds after Second World War. It handed down its concepts of design and traditional and modern visual styles to younger generations while at the same time its styles influencing many present-day designers (Hillier & Escritt, 2004).

    Read More

  • Eclecticism Essay

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    Though the Modern style continued to dominate high class business environments, designers were becoming more experimental, conforming less and less to the principles laid out by the pioneers of the Modernist movement. The free thinking masses of the new decade somewhat clashed with the rational and functional mind of dominant Modernist force Le Corbusier, who throughout his career detailed numerous guidelines, including his ‘Five Points Of Architecture’ which were to be followed in order to create a successful piece of design.

    Read More

  • Abstract Expressionism Analysis

    1707 Words  | 4 Pages

    Black smoke stained the sky and scarlet blood darkened the earth, as global war, once again, ravaged twentieth-century society. The repercussions of the Second World War rippled across the Atlantic and spread like an infectious disease. As the morality of humankind appeared to dissipate with each exploding bomb, anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness riddled the American public and began to spill into the art of New York City’s avant-garde (Paul par. 4). By the mid-1940s, artists reeling from the unparalleled violence, brutality, and destruction of war found a shared “vision and purpose” in a new artistic movement: Abstract Expressionism (Chave 3). Critics considered the most prominent artists of the movement to comprise the New York School

    Read More

  • The New Negro Movement: The Harlem Renaissance

    419 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Harlem Renaissance had a lot of influence on modern day art because many artist white and black drew inspiration from traditional African sculptures. In the 1900s, “the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art.”(“African

    Read More

  • The Art Of Pablo Picasso And Georges Braque

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    Cubism was a movement that started in 1908 and ended roughly by the end of the 1920’s and is often synonymous with the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, two of the most influential and important of the cubist painters, each coming up with their own first cubist painting near 1908. They tended toward the structural and architectural form of Cubism that was hinted at by post-impressionist Paul Cézanne, whose death would provoke an exhibition of work for future cubists and other modern painters to admire and learn from. On the other hand, near 1912-14, cubism took a different turn with the help of Picasso’s papier collé, (Golding 120, Green Synthesis 88, Gopnik 81). The collages produced by papier collé managed to change analytical cubism,

    Read More

  • The Bauhaus School

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Bauhaus was a school for art, design and architecture founded in Weimar, Germany with a core objective “to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts.” Before the Bauhaus was established, fine arts were seen to hold a higher esteem than craftsmanship The Bauhaus intended to change this feeling about the arts. The Bauhaus wanted to create products that were simple in design which as a result could be easily mass produced. Of all the principles taught at the Bauhaus, form follows function summed up the schools main philosophy. Architecture and design should reflect the new period in history, and adapt to the era of the machine was one founding principal of the Bauhaus school. Students began with a preliminary course that taught the basic Bauhaus theory and then were allowed to enter into specialized workshops. Throughout the years, it moved to Dessau and then Berlin and ending with the closure by Nazi soldiers. As a result of its existence, the Bauhaus had a major impact on art, design, and architecture trends throughout the rest of the century.

    Read More

  • The Black Power Movement

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sometimes referred to as “the artistic sister of the Black Power Movement” the Black Arts Movement (BAM) arose in the mid 1960’s to develop a poetic/artistic statement that not only provided a means of black existence in America, but also provided a “change of vision” in the perception of African American identity. Much like the New Negro Movement, the Black Arts Movement was a flourishing time of artistic exertion among African American musicians, poets, playwrights, writers, and visual artists who understood that their artistic production could be the key to revising stereotypes of African American subordinacy (Neal). Through looking at the enriching artworks by David Hammons, Jeff Donaldson, and Adrian Piper, it can be understood that the African American race strived for both racial equality and social change. Hammons, Donaldson, and Piper were unique artist who changed African American Art and captivated America through their exceptional styles of talent and artworks. While the artworks Spade (Power to the Spade) by David Hammons, Wives of Shango by Jeff Donaldson, and Adrian Piper’s advertisement in Village Voice share few commonalities such as similar subject matter, such as their strive for black power, and imagery, their differences in mediums, structural styles, and technique show differentiating aspects of each artworks physique.

    Read More

  • Bauhaus Production Case Study

    1784 Words  | 4 Pages

    Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus was a German art school that initiated the combination of art and crafts innovatively to produce goods for everyday use, which influenced and shaped modern life. The Bauhaus value is still effective today since we can still see the impact of the Bauhaus. For example, contemporary furniture are mostly minimalist, which is one of the values from the Bauhaus. This essay will discuss the failure of the Bauhaus in achieving its mass-produce ideal through examining three Bauhaus production, the Wassily Chair, the chess set and Model No. MT49 tea infuser. Through the aspects of artistry and utility, the Bauhaus pursued to generate reasonably priced mass-production by taking the forms and materials into

    Read More

  • essay

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...erfect atmosphere to convey speed, efficiency, and technology of the time. This open floor plan not only functions as an efficient visual element but also incorporates the idea of communal work. Customers, store leaders, associates, tech gurus etc. are all free to wander and work together without office walls or boundaries to separate them. The change in the use of light began during the Bauhaus era when lampshades which used to block light and create harsh separations were replaced with broad flood lights evenly spaced to create equal lighting throughout. The use of pure white walls and metal trim also make direct reference to the Bauhaus ideals. Likewise there is an egalitarian principle evoked in the designs. Built to human scale and made clearly for use by people rather than large monumental or overly scaled buildings that often promote power and authority.

    Read More

  • Bauhaus Influence

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Bauhaus was one of the most influential modernist art schools of the 20th century, not to say the most influential one. Their main concern was to teach, and to understand art 's relationship to society and technology. The school was founded by the German Architect: Walter Gropius. Consequently, The Bauhaus of Design had a huge impact in Europe which is the central continent of art and the United States even after it has been closed, and has forever shape the development of Art history from now on. According to the art story website, the Bauhaus of Design was shaped by the 19th and early 20th centuries trends such as Arts and Crafts movement, which had sought to level the distinction between fine and applied arts, and to reunite creativity and manufacturing. Which later on has had affected some major artwork such as architecture and graphic design and as a result, had also inspire the romantic medievalism of the school 's early years, in which it pictured itself as a kind of medieval crafts guild. But in the mid-1920s the medievalism gave way to a stress on uniting art and industrial design, and it was this which ultimately proved to be its most original and important achievement (Art Story). The school is also known for its faculty, which included some of the most talented artists such as : Wassily

    Read More

  • The Use of Traditional Styles in Contemporary Architecture

    1649 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of the key ideas of the modern era was to forge the designs of the future on the corpses of the past, disregarding everything from the last era and moving forward with new ideals and styles. Refining and discarding they shaped, molded and constricted the ideas of design until reaching the pinnacle of minimalism. Creating design with pure aesthetics and reducing an object down to its core fundamental elements. Using the ideas of “less is more” or even “using less for more”, the designs ended up simple and elegant with a focus not in quantit...

    Read More

More about Walter Gropius and The Bauhaus Movement

Open Document