Virtual Bauhaus is one of the events that mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus. By recreating the Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany, the exhibition transports visitors into this iconic space of modern architecture and design.



WHAT WAS THE BAUHAUS?

Established in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, before it moved to Dessau in 1925, the Bauhaus was a school of applied art and architecture. Its unconventional faculty included avant-garde painters, such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, who supplemented the learning of hands-on skills with courses in form, color theory, and material experimentation. These courses included photography, typography, advertising, interior and exhibition design, weaving, and architecture, among other fields. The notion that an object’s form should be determined by its function, rather than artistic style, is one of the school’s lasting legacies. This is embodied in the school’s building in Dessau, which was designed by its founding director, Walter Gropius, in 1925-26. With its ornament-free facade, radial shape, glass walls, and steel frame, the structure is exemplary of modern architecture.



WHO WERE ITS MEMBERS?

At its height, in 1929–30, some 200 students were enrolled at the Bauhaus—a relatively small number in comparison to other schools at this time. And yet a huge proportion of these students and teachers went on to lead remarkable careers. The artists Josef and Anni Albers, for example, both began as students and then later taught at the school. After emigrating to the US in 1933, the couple became important teachers for a generation of American artists. The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy, who also taught at the Bauhaus, established The New Bauhaus in Chicago, which is today the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Other members carried the Bauhaus legacy further abroad, including Hannes Meyer in the Soviet Union and Mexico, Arieh Sharon in Israel, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack in Australia, and the couple Yamawaki Iwao and Yamawaki Michiko in Japan.



WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

The Bauhaus pioneered a way of teaching art and design that still today, one hundred years later, comprises the foundation course for many art schools. Leaning as a process of doing and experimentation replaced the copying Old Masters and historical styles. Students practiced artistic creativity as a form of democratic living, regularly participating in administrative decisions and dismantling hierarchies between student and teacher. Moreover, in comparison to other schools at the time, students were rarely discriminated against on the basis of sex, race, gender, or religion. This social openness was one reason why the National Socialists regularly criticized the Bauhaus. When this party came to power in 1933, it closed the school, forcing many of its members to emigrate abroad. That the Bauhaus stood in opposition to fascist ideology is one reason why it has become such an important example of twentieth-century art and design.