Walter Adolph Georg Gropius: Bauhaus School Of Design

Improved Essays
Born in 1883, Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was the founder of the famous Bauhaus school of design. Gropius studied architecture in Berlin and Munich yet never finished a degree to the dismay of his architect father. After spending a year roaming Europe Gropius went to work for Peter Behrens at his architecture firm. Here he met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Two years later he and Adolf Meyer opened their own architecture firm in Berlin. One of the firms greatest contributions still stands today; a shoes form factory made of steel and glass (The German Way). World War 1 put a hold on architectural work while Gropius served in the German military. After the war ended in 1918 he returned to architectural work. A year later he set to combine the Grand …show more content…
First, there was a need to bring artists of different mediums together. Here, painter’s sculptures and craftsmen could work together on projects. This would give an equal distinction of importance for artists working in applied and decorative art as those working in fine art. Gropius wanted to produce working artist that were able to enter the working field competitively. Leaders in their field of art were brought in to keep the quality of training at the highest level.
This unified ideal is illustrated in Gropius belief that cathedrals were the best example of craftsmen working together. To complete the most beautiful buildings craftsmen of all areas had to work for a common product. Painters, sculptures, masons, architects, focused on the building as a whole instead of a single piece that would be displayed
…show more content…
Upon opening in 1919, courses included bookbinding, printmaking, weaving, and metalwork. Painting, sculpture, pottery and cabinet making were added the following year. In 1921 Dutch designer Theo van Doesburg visits Bauhaus encouraging the move away from emotional art to something that could be easily reproduced for a large number of people. This encourages Gropius to focus on mixing artistic design with an industrial application. He even creates a new slogan for the school, “Art and Technology- a new unity” (Bauhaus Design School). In 1923 the Bauhaus opens its doors to the public hosting exhibitions and offering lectures. The results is a raised public interest in the school including support from well know public figures. The support becomes crucial when the following year government financial support is cut in half. To raise money for the school Gropius creates a fundraising committee necessary to keep the school open. Unfortunately Bauhaus closes its doors in Weimar and moves to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Chartres Cathedral and the Nanna Ziggurat are wonderful representatives for their geographical origins. The Chartres Cathedral, found on page 360 in the textbook, is a masterful example of Gothic architecture. The Nanna Ziggurat, found on page 324 of the textbook, is a simply designed geometric structure, created before complex architecture classifications. Both the Chartres Cathedral and Nanna Ziggurat contrast visually and structurally. While they ostensibly differ, in truth, the Chartres and Nanna actually share similar aspects such as purpose and construction duration.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rapson Hall Analysis

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Rapson Hall: Sampling and Blending the Past In the first century BC the architect Vitruvius wrote that architecture is made up of three separate elements: Utilitas, Firmitas, and Venustas.5 In ABC of Architecture, James O’Gorman focuses on Utilitas, or the functional aspects of a building, to analyze types of architecture. He does this through examining plan, beginning with a belief that plan is “the developed diagram of function”4 and that the way the building is to be used is created as the plan is laid out. Because of this, analyzing the arrangement of its plan should allow a person to understand the way it was designed. A central generalization O’Gorman makes is that plans are either drawn in an additive way or in a divisive way.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Artists always have some form of basic, artistic training; Giuseppe’s fundamentals were learned during the Italian Renaissance. During this time, people admired the beauty of Grecian art. Most of the the artwork from the Italian Renaissance mirrored this affection. You would never guess that Giuseppe’s work originated from this era. It is difficult to deduce that Giuseppe’s work originated from this era.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Response—Cathedral This is a quite interesting story. The title of this story is called “Cathedral”, but actually the author did not spend many words to describe it. It can be seen that the author want to guide the readers to focus on the psychological reflection of characters. At the beginning of this story, when the main character’s wife said that the blind man, Robert will visit and spend the night with them, It can be easily found out that the main character did not like Robert.…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Speer impressed the Nazi leadership and in 1933 Goebbels asked him to rebuild the Propaganda Ministry, and later design the decorations of the Nazi Rally at Nuremberg, he impressed Hitler and in July 1933, Hitler gave Speer the task of renovating the Chancellor’s residence. This began a close friendship between Hitler and Speer, that would eventually elevate him into various positions of power, such as Hitler’s Chief architect and Minister for Armaments, and it is through these positions that Speer would contribute to the history of Nazi Germany and to international history. During his role as Hitler’s Chief Architect, Albert Speer would contribute to the history of Nazi Germany in a variety of ways. As an architect Speer prefered the Doric Greek style of architecture, and conceived the idea of ‘ruin value’ which Speer stated “ major buildings should be constructed in such a way they would leave aesthetically pleasing ruins for thousands of years into the future. Such ruins would be a testament to the greatness of Nazi Germany, just as ancient Greek or Roman ruins were symbols of the greatness of those…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The building of monumental cathedrals in the middle ages was a reflection of faith and creative energy of medieval society. Although cathedral building was run by religious people or institutions, it was often a community effort. Architecture played a very important role for the church in medieval times. The more great the architecture, the more the church believed it was glorify God. Many of medieval cathedrals are museums, housing fantastic examples of craftsmanship and works of art.…

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Adolf Hitler had an obsession with art at an early age in his life, which led him to his conclusion of how important it was for his reign. He moved to Vienna in 1907 and worked as a casual laborer and watercolor painter. Hitler applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected both times. The realistic paintings of buildings (figure 1) and landscapes that he preferred to paint just wasn’t in the favor of abstract and modern styles that the school were looking for.…

    • 1317 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although his father wanted him to do something else, he still desired art the most and spent a lot of time trying to become a better artist and trying to find a place to study for that specific matter. He didn’t care what his father wanted to do, he knew that what he wanted to do was more important for him in the future. After a year has passed, he was then send to England to study more about the education of art. He even met some of the most famous English professional painters when he was at London where he attended Royal Academy of Arts. Some of his most famous and unique arts that he had made was called…

    • 1784 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Pointed arch, stained glass windows, buttresses were all part of the structure of both the cathedrals. “Monks or canons lived under rules that regulated every aspect of their daily lives” (Giandrea…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Question one Harry Saidler was born in 1923. He was among the most proficient architecture in Australia (Australian Government, 2009). Some architects would admire his work because of the international methodologies and modernist ideas. This caused a great impact in the local architecture’s shape.…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Art is an expression of the human condition since the time when men and women dwelled in caves. Creativity is not proprietary to what we consider modern times. This essay will look at two sculptures from the third millennium B.C. Each of these statues tells us something about the motivations of people of that particular era.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He thought the manufacturing during his time was soulless and lacked creativity and that art was losing its place in society. Feeling personally responsible to be the necessary change, Gropius went on to create the Bauhaus school. The Focus of the Bauhaus was to eliminate the distinction…

    • 1093 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".[2] Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles in 1962, which eventually became Gehry Partners in 2001. A couple buildings around the world he…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a German art historian. In his 1916 essay on The Rise of Cubism he illustrates the struggles and failures on how the Cubist movement was developed, as well as the eventual success of the Cubists and why they achieved it. At the turn of the twentieth century many artists were experimenting because they were dissatisfied with the limitations of traditional methods of creating art. They tried all sorts of approaches, however a young Pablo Picasso, unlike the rest of them, chose a new direction, focusing only on the form of the object he was creating.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Bauhaus Essay

    • 1475 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Bauhaus School of Design was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by Walter Gropius, a German architect. The Bauhaus school was created to combine the arts and crafts, technology and architecture disciplines to reach a common goal to unify creativity and the manufacturing objects, building and art. Walter Gropius decided to combine two of his schools, the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts, into what he called the Bauhaus. He believed that by training the students in both fine art and design he would produce new artisans and designers who were gifted in creating useful and stunning objects. The instructors at the Bauhaus weren’t just teachers who loved art they were artists who were part of the German expressionism…

    • 1475 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays