Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity

The Bauhaus, the school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933 brought together artists, architects, and designers in an extradinary conversation about the nature of modern art. Aiming to rethink the very form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site for a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped the world today. Published to accompany a major exhibition on the Bauhaus at The Museum of Modern Art -- the Museum's first comprehensive treatment of the subject since its famous Bauhaus exhibition of 1938 -- Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity offers a new generational perspective on the twentieth century's most influential experiment in artistic education. Drawing on the three major Bauhaus collections in Germany (the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar), with which the Museum collaborated on the exhibition, Bauhaus 1919-1933 examines the extraordinarily broad spectrum of the school's products, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater and costume design, and painting and sculpture. Many of the objects discussed and illustrated here have rarely if ever been seen outside Germany. Featuring 475 rich color and black and white reproductions, Bauhaus 1919-1933 includes two comprehensive essays by the exhibition's curators, Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, that synthesize new perspectives on the Bauhaus. Shorter essays by twenty leading scholars apply contemporary viewpoints to thirty key Bauhaus objects, and an illustrated narrative chronology.