Bauhaus

(also, Hochschule für Bau und Gestaltung), an educational institution and architectural-artistic association in Germany. It was founded in 1919 by the architect W. Gropius in Weimar and transferred to Dessau in 1925. It was disbanded by the fascists in 1933. The leading members of the Bauhaus, guided by the aesthetic principles of functionalism, sought to develop universal principles of modern plastic art. They wished to find a complex artistic resolution of the contemporary material everyday environment; they developed the ability of their students to comprehend new materials and structures aesthetically and creatively and taught them to grasp the specific beauty of functionally designed objects which were created under the modern conditions of machine production. A major element of the educational process in the Bauhaus was practical work experience in industrial, artistic, and design workshops, where, along with their educational studies, the students worked on architectural projects (including models of residential houses), models of industrial mass-produced articles (mainly furniture, lamps, and textiles), decorative paintings, and sculpture. Teaching and creative experimentation in the Bauhaus were conducted by outstanding architects of the functional school (W. Gropius, H. Meyer, and L. Mies van der Rohe), pioneers of modern design (J. Itten and L. Moholy-Nagy), and some avant-garde artists (P. Klee, W. Kandinsky, L. Feininger, and O. Schlemmer).

The theoretical and practical activity of the Bauhaus played an important role in asserting the principles of rationalism in 20th century world architecture and in creating the foundations of modern design. In the field of visual arts, the Bauhaus was the center of world formalism. Its theoreticians and principal inspirers expressed erroneous views on the nature and aim of art and denied the ideological nature of art as they denied realism.