The Immeasurable Impact of the Bauhaus
Founded during a period of revolutionary artistic experimentation in Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus was an art school with a radical objective: to coalesce all the arts and create a new, utopian form of artistic expression. The Bauhaus embraced mass production in the arts and pioneered the utilitarian tenet that form follows function, which became a foundational principle of the modernist movement. Despite its brief existence in Germany from 1919 to 1933, the Bauhaus became one of the most influential art schools in the history of modern art, responsible for the popularization of the International Style, brutalism, and modernist architecture as well as the development of new art education techniques that are ubiquitous today.
Table of Contents
History of the Bauhaus
What Is Bauhaus Style? Bauhaus Design Characteristics
Bauhaus Furniture Designers
The Bauhaus + The Brutalist
Shop Bauhaus Style Products
History of the Bauhaus
Born in Berlin in 1883 to an architect father, Walter Gropius studied architecture in Munich and Berlin and later worked for the office of architect Peter Behrens alongside fellow architects and designers Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. In 1907, Behrens was a founding member of the German Werkbund, an artists’ association that laid the groundwork for the creation of the Bauhaus, especially with its forward-thinking attitude toward mass production and the arts. Gropius left Behrens’s studio in 1910 but joined the German Werkbund in 1911 and was an active member until his service in World War I interrupted his work. In 1919, Gropius was appointed master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School for Fine Arts in Weimar, which he transformed into the Bauhaus.
The whispers of modernism were already in the air in Germany when the Bauhaus was founded, though the movement would only really take hold, especially in the United States, after the school’s dissolution.
At that time, the political landscape in Germany following its defeat in World War I provided opportune conditions for progressive cultural and artistic movements to flourish. In the early years of the Weimar Republic, artists rejected conservatism and turned toward radical experimentation. In architecture and design, this meant discarding superfluous ornamentation in favor of minimalist, function-forward forms, implementing innovative and cost-effective materials such as steel, glass, and concrete, and designing useful buildings, spaces, and furniture for social welfare, rather than luxury.
This artistic movement in Germany was inspired by Russian Constructivism, a similar revolutionary movement born in the post-war political landscape in Russia. The Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky was a central figure in the development of Constructivism before he moved to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus in 1922.
Gropius took advantage of these progressive conditions to establish the Bauhaus’s radical primary objective: to combine the fine arts and arts and crafts to form a single, comprehensive artistic expression. Influenced by his membership to the German Werkbund, Gropius held an open mind toward mass production, believing that affordable, mass-produced products could also be functional and artistic. He would later redevelop the Bauhaus’s curriculum to focus more on this belief. Students at the Bauhaus studied color theory, learned to work with a vast assortment of materials, and practiced painting, pottery, typography, metalworking, woodworking, weaving, and other crafts.
Facing financial and conservative political pressure in Weimar, Gropius moved the Bauhaus to a new building he designed in Dessau in 1925. Gropius stepped down as director in 1928 and was succeeded by the head of the Bauhaus architecture department, Hannes Meyer, who enhanced the school’s focus on designing for public good. Conservative political pressure continued to mount in Germany, though, and in 1930 Meyer resigned and was replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a longtime peer and associate of Gropius.
The atmosphere in Germany which had previously fueled the progressive, experimental artistic movements that helped create the Bauhaus turned more and more hostile, and Mies van der Rohe was forced to make more and more concessions to keep the school open. The Nazi Party condemned modernism and suspected the Bauhaus of fostering progressive sentiments. When the Nazi Party took hold of Dessau city council in 1932, Mies van der Rohe was forced to move the Bauhaus to Berlin. Conditions worsened, and he shut the school down in 1933.
Though the school’s existence covered a brief 14 years, its impact on design defies measure. Many Bauhaus students and faculty would go on to become renowned designers who continued to apply – and teach – Bauhaus and modernist design principles: After teaching at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1928, painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy moved to the United States and founded the school that would become the Institute of Design in Chicago; the Cranbrook Academy of Art, with notable alumni including Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, and Harry Bertoia, is considered an “American Bauhaus;” both Hans and Florence Knoll employed Bauhaus tenets in the development of the Knoll furniture and textiles company, which still manufactures Bauhaus furniture pieces today.
What is Bauhaus Style? Bauhaus Design Characteristics
Though the school taught numerous disparate and unconventional artistic techniques in all kinds of mediums, buildings, furniture, and other art pieces attributed to the Bauhaus style typically share certain characteristics in common.
Minimalism
The modernist movement rejected traditional grandeur, so Bauhaus buildings and furniture pieces lack ornamentation that could be considered unnecessary or luxurious. They are minimalist, favoring clean, straight lines, solid colors, and blocky, geometric shapes over decadent, fluid shapes and overly complex textures and patterns.
Bauhaus buildings are blocky, enveloped in unadorned concrete, plaster, or paned glass, with flat roofs and rows of round, rectangle, or ribbon windows. Most have rigid silhouettes, but some Bauhaus buildings feature curved corners, edges, and balconies.
Mass Production
Bauhaus artists were encouraged to experiment with economical materials and production methods. Goods were designed to be mass-producible and were thus made of affordable materials such as aluminum, steel, and glass. At the Bauhaus, textile weavers pioneered synthetic textile materials, ceramicists developed casting machines, and furniture designers set their designs on bent steel frames.
Bauhaus Furniture Designers
Walter Gropius
The father of the Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius’s impact on the Bauhaus style and modernist architecture and design cannot be understated. He not only planted the seeds for what would become the modernist movement in Germany and around the world, but he also tutored, uplifted, and championed countless other designers and architects who too would become prolific modernist figures. At the Bauhaus in Germany and the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gropius’s students, faculty, and friends included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef and Anni Albers, Marcel Breuer, and Florence Knoll, among many others. At Design Within Reach, you can shop the TAC 02 Collection, a set of minimalist dinnerware Gropius designed years after he left the Bauhaus.
Marcel Breuer
German architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer began studying at the Bauhaus in 1920, shortly after its foundation. A talented artist, Breuer was appointed as director of the carpentry workshop at the Bauhaus in 1924 and taught there until 1928. Considered one of Walter Gropius’s protégés, Breuer’s work epitomized Bauhaus tenets. Influenced by the school’s focus on mass production, Breuer designed some of his most renowned furniture pieces while working at the Bauhaus, including the Wassily Chair (1925), which is believed to be the first implementation of bent reinforced tubular steel in furniture design. His famous cantilever Cesca Chair (1928) incorporates the same tubular steel frame. After leaving the Bauhaus, Breuer followed Gropius to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he began a long and celebrated career in architecture.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was an essential pioneer of the modernist movement, his presence prolific before, during, and long after the existence of the Bauhaus. He worked at architect Peter Behrens’s studio alongside Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, served as director of architecture at both the German Werkbund and the Bauhaus, and then was the last director of the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933. Following the school’s closure, Mies van der Rohe continued to contribute to the modernist architecture movement, emigrating to the United States and becoming head of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. There, he designed the curriculum using Bauhaus principles and contributed countless iconic Bauhaus buildings to Chicago’s skyline. His furniture designs, including the Barcelona Chair and Ottoman (1929) and Brno Chair (1930) are renowned examples of Bauhaus furniture design.
Florence Knoll
Though not a student of the Bauhaus school herself, Michigan-born Florence Knoll (née Florence Schust) studied under several modernist icons and would go on to implement Bauhaus and modernist principles in her furniture company and her own furniture designs. An early architecture pupil, Knoll studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, considered by many to be an American iteration of the Bauhaus. She was inspired by the Bauhaus-adjacent International Style, and after Cranbrook sought tutelage under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Using her Bauhaus education, she began designing function-forward office furniture and then founded Knoll with her husband, Hans Knoll, now an international furniture and textiles manufacturer that still produces iconic Bauhaus furniture pieces today.
The Bauhaus + The Brutalist
Already laden with accolades for its direction and performances and nominated for ten more awards at the 97th Academy Awards including Best Picture, The Brutalist (2024), directed by Brady Corbet, is liable to become an American film classic. And it would deserve that label – over its epic 215-minute runtime, the film depicts a story of the American Dream so familiar and realistic that it feels biographical. It follows Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth, portrayed by Adrian Brody, as he emigrates to the United States to rebuild his life – literally – after surviving the Holocaust. Tóth’s life and designs are vivid and palpable, beautifully imagined by Corbet and production designer Judy Becker, which makes it surprising to learn that both he and his designs are completely fictional.
Well, not completely. Though Tóth’s story is made up, Corbet and Becker drew significant inspiration from real modernist figures, particularly Marcel Breuer. Tóth and Breuer were both Hungarian-Jewish. Like Breuer, Tóth studied at the Bauhaus before World War II, and thus both could be considered Bauhaus or modernist designers. Some of Tóth’s furniture designs depicted in the movie closely resemble the tubular steel pieces Breuer designed during his time at the Bauhaus. Both designers emigrated to the United States to continue their work, though Breuer left before the war began. In fact, many European modernist designers emigrated to the United States before the second World War, including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and László Moholy-Nagy. As a concentration camp survivor, Tóth was given a story unique from the real-life architects that inspired his character.
It is Tóth’s identity as a survivor that resonates so viscerally in his brutalist designs. Though many today see its austerity as harsh, even authoritarian, brutalism was a progressive modernist design style that arose during the post-war reconstruction in Europe in the 1950s, particularly the United Kingdom. Brutalism existed according to modernist principles, favoring minimalism and affordable materials (primarily concrete) over traditional ornamentation. Even the name, brutalism, deceives – its creations were not named for being brutal, violent, punishing; the style was associated instead with the French term “béton brut,” or “raw concrete.”
A utilitarian, socially progressive style, brutalism was implemented in the designs of many public buildings and social housing projects throughout Europe and, later, the rest of the world. Through Brutalism, Tóth – and the world – recovered from the trauma of World War II and rebuilt, blocky but beautiful.
