Since it was not possible to do much traveling in 2020, we do not have many photos left to share from last year.
Going back …, 2019 was the centenary year of the founding of the Bauhaus school in Germany. We took a pilgrimage tour of the three German cities where the Bauhaus school existed: Dessau, Weimar and Berlin. So … this is our first post about this trip in Germany.
From my (Chris) favorite German label, Kompakt:
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The school was operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts, architecture and the fine arts.
Our tour began in Dessau, a town 80 miles southwest of Berlin, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the school was situated between 1925 and 1932. We were greeted by this installation at the Dessau bahnhof – notice the tiles behind the installation which were laid at angle, lending it more dynamism.
The first stop is the brand new Bauhaus Museum Dessau which was opened by Angela Merkel on September 8, 2019 to commemorate the centenary. We visited it on September 29, 2019.
The museum was built by addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala) from Barcelona. Their design was selected from 831 submissions in an open international competition held in late 2015. The concept is that of a floating concrete block (“black box”) in a glass shell. The upper floor provides optimum climatic conditions for storage and display of the collection while the ground floor is open and transparent, offering a forum for talks, dances, and performances.
There was a cafe and shop as well as a semicircular wooden “Arena” by American artist sculptor Rita Mcbride, where events can be held for a number of spectators.
The Bauhaus school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify the principles of mass production with individual artistic vision and strove to combine aesthetics with everyday function.
This brand new museum will select for exhibitions from the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, brimming with more than 49,000 items. While some of the items in the exhibition are one-off experimental works, many items are now part of everyday life.
Previously the foundation did not have such display opportunities for the vast collection.
The Wassily Chair (below), also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Hungarian-born designer Marcel Breuer between 1925-1926. Also shown is one of his chrome nesting tables.
The permanent exhibition – Versuchsstätte Bauhaus – features over 1,000 exhibits and tells the story of the famous school in Dessau.
This table lamp (“MT8”) designed by German designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Swiss designer Carl Jakob Jucker, became known as the Bauhaus Lamp, embodying the principle that “form follows function”.
The exhibition aims to show Bauhaus as a vibrant place where people taught and learned, conducted artistic experiments and worked on industrial prototypes.
According to their website (click here), the exhibition does not “focus on the famed design icons and the masters, but rather the school and the students: the reality of learning and teaching between the poles of creative design and industrial prototype production, artistic experiment and economic pressure, educational institution and emancipatory aspiration.”
On display were snapshots and movies about the students’ daily lives, at work and at play.
There is a massive wall of names, photos, pins and interconnecting strings which graphically display the gatherings, networks, and influences of artists, craftsmen and architects of the 20th century.
The connections illustrate the historical conditions, visions, working procedures, methods, movers and shakers of the time.
New York artist Lucy Raven won the invitation competition “Kunst am Bau” with her concept of “Lichtspielhaus” – a dynamic lighting installation made of glass in different colors, which interacts with the architecture of the building.
