‘Bauhaus: Art as Life’ at the Barbican Art Gallery from 3 May

‘Bauhaus: Art as Life’ at the Barbican Art Gallery from 3 May – 12 August 2012

Next month the Barbican Art Gallery will open its doors for ‘Bauhaus: Art as life’ – the biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years – featuring the works of Bauhaus Masters such as Josef and Anni Albers, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy and many more but also of lesser-known Bauhaus artists and students.

The exhibition, which will present the Bauhaus’ utopian vision to change society in the aftermath of the First World War, will showcase paintings, sculptures, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation from the modern world’s most famous art school.

Bauhaus was a modern art and design school in Germany that was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 and lasted until 1933 when it was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime.

Bauhaus was famous for its design style that combined crafts and the fine arts, and also for its revolutionary teaching method, which replaced the traditional pupil-teacher relationship with the idea of a community of artists working together. Although the school only existed for fourteen years, it was hugely influential and was a driving force behind Modernism as it further sought to change society in the aftermath of World War 1, to find a new way of living.

From the top:

Prospectus ’14 Bauhausbücher’ by László Moholy-Nagy, 1928 – Black and red print on white paper with wire binding © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

Club Chair from Oeser’s home by Josef Albers, 1928 – Mahogany veneer, beech wood, maple, with flat cushions. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Photograph: Fotostudio Barsch © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

Tea Service by Marianne Brandt, 1924 -Tombac, nickel silver, silver and ebony. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

Weimar by Herbert Bayer, summer, 1923 – Colour lithograph on cardboard. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Photograph: Markus Hawlik © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

The spatial effect of colours and forms, from Wassily Kandinsky’s course at the Bauhaus Dessau by Eugen Batz , 1929 – Tempera over pencil on paper, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

Masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building, c.1926/1998 From left to right: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl and Oskar Schlemmer. Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Centre Pompidou, Paris

Via: The Barbican and Lin Morris