Bauhaus Artists
Bauhaus Artists
Gunta Stölzl
Gunta Stölzl was a teacher at the Bauhaus who was a vital part of the
development of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus. She was a German textile
artist who became the first female Master at the school due to her large impact
on uniting art practises taught at Bauhaus with traditional textile
techniques. Before going to the Bauhaus,
Stölzl studied at the School of Arts and Crafts where she actively participated
in the school’s curriculum reform, however after hearing about the Bauhaus, she
decided that she shouldn’t be waiting for reforms to happen when at the
Bauhaus, they were already taking place. Bauhaus had new ideas and new
approaches to art and design through exploration and development of theory and
practice and therefore Stölzl took the opportunity of being in such a
forward-thinking environment and created the first women’s department, which
soon became the Weaving department. She became a weaving Master in 1925 when
Bauhaus relocated to Dessau.
Gunta Stölzl still took classes at the Bauhaus as well, such as Colour
Theory by Jonannes Itten, Visual Thinking by Paul Klee and Abstract Art by
Wassily Kandinsky, which she used to inspire and influence her teaching and
ideas of weaving. The weaving department however did not teach a lot of
technical work, so Stölzl (along with other students) took courses outside the
school to learn, develop and refine their craft. Although, the lack of
technical guidelines enabled her and other students to become more experimental
and innovative with their use of materials and techniques which developed the
understanding of weaving, bring new weaving techniques and traditional
techniques together. Weaving practices at the Bauhaus soon became more relevant
to contemporary industry design and under Stölzl’s direction, the Bauhaus
Weaving Workshop became one of its most successful facilities.
In 1929, Gunta Stölzl married Arieh Sharon, from Isreal, who later
became a well known Israeli architect, however because she married a Jewish
man, her German citizenship was revoked. Stölzl also gave birth to her daughter
named Yael. Then, in 1932, Gunta and Yael moved from Germany to Switzerland to
avoid the rising tensions, however this impacted the freedom and inspiration
she had for her work. She did continue to form textile companies with her
students and later undertook her own solo project. In 1942, Stölzl married
Willy Stadler and became a Swiss citizen who she had another daughter with
named Monika, born in 1943. Between 1967 and 1987, she left her hand weaving
business to experiment with tapestry and weaving of her own designs. Gunta Stölzl
died at age 86 (1897 - 1983) but still had her work exhibited in numerous
museums across Europe, USA and Japan.
Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar
Schlemmer was a German artists born in 1888 and died 1943. He was born in
Swabia and studied painting before attending the Stuttgart Academy in 1912. Due
to the forceful control of the Nazi’s, Schlemmer abandoned the Impressionist
style and began to focus of creating Cubism style artwork. Schlemmer was
inspired by the Cubists through their ideas of form and composition and the
tensions between these two aspects of painting. As well as painting, he also
created sculptures and undertook metalwork through which he would explore and
develop new approaches to structure and perspective.
Between
1920 and 1929, Oskar Schlemmer worked as a teacher at the Bauhaus where he
inspired young aspiring artists using his complex ideas. His strong influence
among the students made him one of the most important teachers at the Bauhaus
during this period. However, towards the end on the 1920’s, the power of the
Nazi’s was becoming more prominent and Schlemmer’s work was viewed as
degenerate, so he was therefore dismissed from teaching at the Bauhaus. Cubism
gave him great direction for his structural studies and it was portrayed within
his work through this experimentation of figures and their relationship to the
space around them. Schlemmer was intrigued with the possibilities of figures
and the characteristic forms can be seen in his sculptures as well as his
paintings. Oskar Schlemmer also practiced stage design from around 1929 and
designed settings for the opera ‘Nightingale’ and the
ballet ‘Renard’ by Igor Stravinsky.
“My themes – the
human figure in space, its moving and stationary functions, sitting, lying,
walking, standing – are as simple as they are universally valid. Besides they
are inexhaustible.” Oskar
Schlemmer
Even though the Bauhaus Movement was progressive and challenged
traditional art, Oskar Schlemmer’s ideas on art were still viewed as complex
and challenging. His work has been exhibited all over the world, including his
home-country of Germany. Many viewed his artwork as a ‘rejection of pure
abstraction instead retaining a sense of the human, though not in the emotional
sense but in view of the physical structure of the human.’ He presented his
work architecturally and would reduce his chosen figure to a rhythmic balance
between convex, concave and flat surfaces. He liked to convey his fascination
of the way the human body moved and the forms it could make. Additionally, Schlemmer also has books published based on his theories on art
and a comprehensive book of his letters and diary entries from
1910 to 1943.
Herbert Bayer
Herbet Bayer is an
Austrian-American artist who works with graphic design, sculpture, photography,
painting, architecture, exterior and interior designing and art direction.
Bayer was born on April 5th, 1900, and grew up in Hungary. He is
believed to have been the last living member of the Bauhaus. Bayer began his
creative career as an apprentice to artist Georg Schmidthammer, however ended
this apprenticeship to study at the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. Teachers at the
Bauhaus, such as László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily
Kandinsky and Paul Klee were able to develop and improve Bayer’s skills and
later he was appointed the director of printing and advertising at the Bauhaus
by Walter Gropius, the creator of Bauhaus. From the Bauhaus, Bayer began to use
a more reductive minimalist method, often using all lowercase, sans serif
typefaces. He also tried designing his own typefaces using simplified phonetic
alphabets, much like other typographers of his time, Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschichold.
Successful oilman, Robert O. Anderson, and Bayer had the
opportunity to meet, which turned into a life-long friendship. Anderson founded
the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO’s) which was the ARCO was a personal art
collection of Anderson’s. He appointed Herbert Bayer as the Art and Design
Consultant and Bayer supervised the construction of the ARCO Plaza (L.A) and
created its corporate identity. Anderson also requested that Bayer designed a
monumental sculpture-fountain Double Ascension for ARCO Plaza and due to
Bayer’s hard work and supervision, the collection exceeded thirty thousand
artworks stored at the ARCO nationwide. The collection ranged from historic to contemporary
paintings, sculptures ethnic art to other precious artefacts. Herbert Bayer
worked there until he died in 1985 and he received the Ambassador’s Award for
Excellence and was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Art Directors Club for
his invaluable contribution to art.