Bauhaus exhibition from 1923
The Bauhaus exhibition of 1923 was the first public presentation of the State Bauhaus, which was founded as an art school in 1919 . It took place from August 15 to September 30, 1923 at three locations in Weimar and showed works created at the Bauhaus. The exhibition locations were the building of the State Bauhaus, the State Museum and the model house on the Horn . The six-week exhibition had around 15,000 visitors.
Emergence
Since it was founded in 1919, the Bauhaus has repeatedly been exposed to massive public criticism. In June 1922, the Thuringian state government granted the Bauhaus a larger loan with the condition that the results of previous work be presented to the public in an exhibition. The first exhibition concept was presented in September 1922. In October 1922, a Bauhaus-internal commission was appointed to organize the exhibition, to which the masters Oskar Schlemmer , Georg Muche and Josef Hartwig as well as the journeyman Kurt Schwerdtfeger and the apprentice Marcel Breuer belonged. With the appointment of the exhibition commission, the director of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius , declared a state of emergency. As a result, each individual, like the workshops, should relate their work to the exhibition. At the Bauhaus, the planned exhibition was initially controversial because it was felt to be premature due to the lack of presentable results. The Bauhaus workshops had only been working smoothly since 1922.
The exhibition was advertised in 120 German train stations with a poster designed by Joost Schmidt and produced in the Bauhaus printing house with the Bauhaus logo by Oskar Schlemmer . The poster named the months of July to September as the exhibition dates. This information was later updated with a sticker, as the exhibition started late in August.
procedure
Prelude
The exhibition opened on August 15, 1923, one month late, in the presence of the Reichskunstwarts Edwin Redslob . The five-day “Bauhaus Week” was the beginning and the accompanying cultural program. The Bauhaus director Walter Gropius opened it with a lecture on art and technology - a new unit with which he proclaimed a strategic change of course for the Bauhaus. The institution turned away from the handicraft orientation and focused on the development of prototypes for industrial series production. During the “Bauhaus Week” Wassily Kandinsky gave a lecture on synthetic art . The Rotterdam architect and De Stijl artist Pieter Oud gave a lecture on the development of modern architecture in Holland. The German National Theater was the venue for Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet . Further performances during the opening week were a concert with six piano pieces, including four world premieres by Ferruccio Busoni and the first performance of the Marienlieder by Paul Hindemith . Kurt Schmidt's Mechanical Ballet premiered in the Jena City Theater, which had previously been converted by Walter Gropius . The week ended with a matinee . Under the direction of Hermann Scherchen the repetition of the first performance of Stravinski's story of the soldier took place . In the evening there was a lantern parade and fireworks as well as a demonstration of the reflective plays of color by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack .
exhibition
In the building of the State Bauhaus, room redesigns such as the small staircase and the corridors as well as the Gropius room were presented. The work of the workshops was exhibited in the other rooms. The vestibule redesigned by Oskar Schlemmer was shown in the workshop building. Results from wood and stone carving could also be seen there. An international architecture exhibition was affiliated with the Bauhaus exhibition. It showed photographs, models and design drawings by representatives of New Building , such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe , Le Corbusier , Pieter Oud and Frank Lloyd Wright .
In the State Museum, individual paintings and sculptures by masters, journeymen and apprentices were shown.
Another exhibition station was the model house Am Horn as a ready-to-live single-family home. It was built specifically for the exhibition within four months. In the model house, the Bauhaus's views on architecture, furniture, design and color were presented together for the first time. It was the result of the collaboration between all the workshops at the Bauhaus.
The Weimar Bauhaus cards were published as 20 different artist postcards for the exhibition . They were designed by employees and students of the Bauhaus, including Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger . The print preparation took place in the Bauhaus printing house.
The State Bauhaus Manifesto in Weimar 1919–1923 was published as a book with a cover design by Herbert Bayer in an edition of 2,600 copies. 300 copies each were made in English and Russian. To publish the book, the Bauhaus Verlag was founded in 1923 . The lavishly designed volume is the first comprehensive programmatic publication of the Bauhaus, in which, in addition to detailed descriptions of the work of the workshops, there are also texts by Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer as well as the fundamental contribution on The New Typography by László Moholy-Nagy along with original lithographs by the artist.
resonance
The exhibition was not a financial success as inflation peaked in 1923. But it was a journalistic success due to the strong public response. The politically left-wing and liberal camp showed great interest in the design and educational goals of the Bauhaus. Conservative circles felt that the exhibition encouraged their rejection of the Bauhaus. The Marienlieder by Paul Hindemith, which could be heard during the introductory Bauhaus week, received extensive praise in press reports . The mechanical cabaret caused more irritation than admiration in the audience. In terms of workshop work, the works of the ceramic workshop in Dornburg , the weaving workshop and the metal workshop were particularly popular. The Am Horn model house was viewed by the press as an important part of the exhibition, but viewed in a differentiated manner. The outer shape was partially panned out, the compactness on the inside was praised for it.
literature
- Martina Ullrich: Weimar 1923. The first Bauhaus exhibition and the Haus Am Horn as reflected in contemporary reception In: Designs of Modernism. Bauhaus exhibitions 1923–2019 , Klassik-Stiftung Weimar, Yearbook 2019, pp. 31–49
- Magdalena Droste: Bauhaus exhibition 1923 in: bauhaus 1919–1933 , Cologne, 2019, pp. 170–179
Web links
- Program of the Bauhaus week for the opening of the Bauhaus exhibition, p. 4 (pdf)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Exhibition and change of direction in: 1919–2019. Die Moderne in Thüringen (pdf), pp. 88–89
- ^ Poster for the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923. Joost Schmidt, 1923 at bauhaus100.de