|
The impact of the
horrible experiences in the First World War, poverty and inflation created
a new consciousness, which influenced strongly Design, Architecture and
Art. 
 Bauhaus furniture at Barnes & Noble  Print This Page |
|
This
was the age of the Bauhaus, a movement which was a reaction to social
change and which aspired an aesthetic relevance. The "New Man" became
the ideal, a concept that also expressed itself in living. The Bauhaus
Design showed a purism with emphasis on straight edges and smooth, slim
forms. The rooms were sparsely furnished, but filled with hygienic freshness.
Superfluous features were taboo. Shining steel was discovered as a material
for furniture 
Bauhaus is the famous German school of design that had inestimable influence on modern architecture, the industrial and graphic arts, and theater design. It was founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar as a merger of an art academy and an arts and crafts school. The Bauhaus was based on the principles of the 19th-century English designer William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement that art should meet the needs of society and that no distinction should be made between fine arts and practical crafts. It also depended on the more forward-looking principles that modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influences of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering. Thus, classes were offered in crafts, typography, and commercial and industrial design, as well as in sculpture, painting, and architecture. The Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornament and ostentatious facades and by harmony between function and the artistic and technical means employed. 
In 1925 the Bauhaus was moved into a group of starkly rectangular glass and concrete buildings in Dessau that were especially designed for it by Gropius. In Dessau the Bauhaus style became more strictly functional with greater emphasis on showing the beauty and suitability of basic, unadorned materials. Other outstanding architects and artists who were on the staff of the Bauhaus included the Swiss painter Paul Klee, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, the Hungarian painter and designer László Moholy-Nagy (who founded the Chicago Institute of Design on the principles of the Bauhaus), the American painter Lyonel Feininger, and the German painter Oskar Schlemmer.