BAUHAUS

HERBERT BAYER'S LAST DANCE INVITATION, 1925

“This ironic last gasp for Dadaistic disorder is Herbert Bayer's invitation to the Bauhaus's last dance in Weimar, before its transfer to Gropius' landmark building in Dessau. The Austrian student was promoted to the role of Bauhaus master as a result of the change, and the school was rebranded along tighter, rationalist lines with a stronger focus on typographic sobriety.  For the invitation, Bayer combined dingbats, Fraktur, and painted writing, as well as sans serif lettering that foreshadows his Dessau building signage, The invitation promises fireworks, music from

THE SAINT OF THE INNER LIGHT (DIE HELIGE VOM INNER LICHT) - 1921

n December 1920, Walter Gropius appointed Klee to the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar. Following a three-month introductory period, Klee began teaching on May 13, 1921, initially in a fortnightly “Practical Composition Course”. His first regular semester, in which he focused on theoretical aspects, began in November 1921. As a supplement to practical technical teaching, he taught a theoretical course on Form, which was a compulsory element of the foundation course, together with preliminary teaching. Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre (“Contributions to a Pictorial Theory of Form”) was a collection of his dated and transcribed lectures. From the autumn of 1923 onwards, his classes were labeled "Design Course: Form" on timetables. These lecture manuscripts are recorded in Chapters I.2 Principielle Ordnung (“Principle Order”) and II. 21 Mechanik (“Mechanics”) of his teaching notes. Klee taught Drawing and organized the evening Life Drawing classes for several semesters between 1923 and 1929, in addition to the theoretical course on Form. He became the Head of the Book-Binding Workshop in 1921, then the Head of the Metal Workshop in 1922, and finally the Head of the Glass Painting Workshop from 1922/23 to 1925. In 1924, the first exhibition on Klee was held in New York. He co-founded the collective "Die Blauen Vier" ("The Blue Four") with artists Alexej Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, and Lyonel Feininger in the same year. The first French retrospective of Klee's art was held a year later at the Parisian Galerie Vavin-Raspail. Klee's Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch ("Pedagogical Sketchbook"), published in 1925, was the second in a series of Bauhaus books published by the academy. Klee taught his design class between lectures and practices during the winter semester of 1925/26 and 1930. He also gave an extra lesson, which he described as "weaving design," in the summer semester 1927 to 1930. His lectures in weaving have focussed in particular on planimetric surface design, which is the larger part of his teaching notes named "Bildnerische Gestaltungslehre.” Klee's pocket journal also records systematic 4th-semester instruction from 1927 to 1929. These three years of training were a major burden for Klee, along with the Life drawing courses, which he led between 1927/28 and 1929/30 in the winter semesters, and the Free Painting class from 1927/28. He then issued his notice and on 1 April 1931 he finished his training.

WASSILY CHAIR 1927

This chair is the typical club chair, but its mere outline, an exquisite structure of gleaming steel, remains everything. The couch, back and limbs of the canvas are seemingly floating in vacuum, the torso of the sitter touching the steel frame. Breuer said that his chair was 'the most drastic work,' the least imaginative, rational, 'cozy' and mechanical.' It was also his most influential style, which took furnishings in a radically different way. In 1925, while teaching in the Bauhaus, Breuer had planned a previous edition, In Dessau, and within a year artists were playing with tubular steel, a powerful German School of Contemporary Art, Architecture and Construction. Breuer claimed to have been inspired by the sturdy, lightweight and mass-produced tubular steel handlebars. He argued that if the material can be bent in handlebars, it can be bent in furniture types.