Bauhaus is celebrating its 100 years anniversary throughout the world

Thanks to "The grand tour of modernism" everyone can discover the many facets of the Bauhaus movement and visit interesting places, exhibitions and events marking this occasion. Around a hundred of outstanding modernist buildings are selected on the basis of their relevance to cultural history and linked together to form an attractive travel route which can be experienced by rail, car or bicycle.

2019 marks the centenary of the founding of the world-famous Bauhaus. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the art school moved to Dessau in 1925 and was forced to close in Berlin in 1933, when the Nazis came. Bauhaus existed for only 14 years.

The founder of the the Staatliches Bauhaus, widely acknowledged as the 20th century’s most influential school of architecture, art, and design, was Walter Gropius. Despite the sudden closure, the legacy of the Bauhaus continued to grow and expand its influence, leaving an undisputed mark on the art and architecture of Western Europe, America and other countries. Its influence can be seen 100 years later in industrial, graphic, and interior design all around the world.

The Bauhaus instructors included some of the most famous contemporary artists and architects, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef and Anni Albers, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Oscar Schlemmer and Lily Reich. The school—which, despite its name ("building house") and the fact that its founder was an architect, did not have an architecture department during its early years—was established with the idea of creating a total work of art (gesamtkunstwerk) in which all disciplines would be brought together.

Another organization, founded in 1960 to collect works of art, objects, documents, and literature related to this movement was the Bauhaus Archive. Opened in Darmstadt, the collection rapidly expanded, and Gropius was asked to design a museum (and he designed it in 1964), although local policies prevented its implementation. Recently closed for construction works, the Archive will be reopened in 2022 — while it occupies temporary space in Charlottenburg.

The 100 Years Bauhaus opening festival was held in January at the Berlin Academy of the Arts, and enthusiasts will have numerous unique opportunities to engage with the Bauhaus legacy throughout the year.

The festival programme’s artistic director Bettina Wagner-Bergelt invited many artists from all over the world to Berlin to revive the spirit of Bauhaus in the tradition of Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and many others.

Art and technology, light, colour, sound and movement and the relationship between humankind and machine played a key role in the programme. In the "Das totale Tanztheater" (Total Dance Theatre) virtual reality installation, for example, in cooperation with Filmtank and Artificial Rome, choreographer Richard Siegal allowed the audience and the action on stage to blend with one another.

Exhibitions, events and research projects being held throughout the world to mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus highlight the global network of Bauhaus adherents. And in addition, they illustrate the complex interrelationships and local influences of the avant-garde

Avant-garde is how modern art critics refer the general trend of new artistic directions that arose in world art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A very thin line separates it from the concept of “modernism”. Read more

movements of the 20th century. An overview:

A new museum is set to open at the Bauhaus' school building in Dessau. Bauhaus Museum Dessau, designed by Barcelona-based studio Gonzalez Hinz Zabala, will present the first-ever comprehensive exhibition of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s collection. It is designed in the Bauhaus spirit, featuring expanses of glazing and an exposed framework.

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s collection, with 49,000 objects and documents and the second largest Bauhaus collection in the world, will be displayed in the city park. Costing 28 million euros and funded by the Federal Government and the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, it has been years in the planning. With the museum’s foundation stone laid on December 4, 2016, it marked the 90th anniversary of Gropius' first Bauhaus Building in Dessau: history happily repeating itself. Addenda architects (Gonzalez Hinz Zabala) presented a concept for a building within a building, a soaring steelwork block in a glass envelope. The upper floor has an enclosed ‘Black Box' in which the collection will be housed, while the ground floor and foyer appear as an ‘Open Stage' with huge glass windows, a site for the presentation of temporary exhibitions and a platform for performance. Collecting, preserving and conserving the collection will be the museum’s raison d’etre.

The influence of the Bauhaus masters on architecture, design, and the production process in America was enormous. In 1930, Harvard University hosted the first Bauhaus exhibition in the U.S., and soon became the unofficial center for the Bauhaus in America. (Gropius joined Harvard’s department of architecture in 1937.) Today, Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum houses the largest Bauhaus collection outside Germany, thanks to the efforts of Gropius and many former Bauhaus teachers and students who emigrated from Nazi Germany.

"The Whole World a Bauhaus", the 100th anniversary exhibit of Bauhaus work, is now on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum—and this is the only place in the U.S. where you will be able to view this important exhibit of art, design and architecture. The exhibit includes photographs, works on paper, models, documents, films, audio recordings and furniture and household objects from the 14 years—1919−1933—in which the Bauhaus operated in Germany.