Bauhaus

Bauhaus was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. Bauhaus was a German art school that birthed an art movement and helped build careers of artists and architects. The Bauhaus Movement was a gesture to focus on the concept of total work of art, aiming to combine all arts in one school under a united ideology. From fine art to industrial design, graphic design, typography, interior design, and architecture. Bauhaus design is often abstract, angular, simple, and geometric. The Bauhaus aimed to combine craftsmanship with modern technology to create functional, high-quality, and aesthetically pleasing objects.

The Bauhaus Movement was shaped by many artists, architects and designers who all made significant contributions to its practice. Walter Gropius was the founder and first director of Bauhaus. He envisioned the Bauhaus as a school that combined art, crafts, and industry to create functional and modern designs. He emphasized collaboration across disciplines and the integration of technology with design. Johannes Itten was a master and influential teacher during the early Bauhaus years. He developed a famous preliminary course, which focused on fundamental principles of color, form, and material. His work on color theory remains foundational in art and design education. László Moholy-Nagy was the first to introduce new typography to the Bauhaus in 1923. From then on, Bauhaus used typography in many designs for its publicity work and in the development for its iconic look.

“Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.”

— Walter Gropius on what is Bauhaus

The Bauhaus aesthetic blurred the lines between art, architecture, graphic design, and furniture, promoting a unified approach to design. Every element of an environment, from the building to the furniture to the typography, was considered part of the whole. I am focusing more on the graphic design and typography aspects of the Bauhaus movement for my aesthetic exploration. 

The design aesthetic of Bauhaus consists of using simple but meaningful lines, geometry, primary colors, and minimalism in design. Using innovative approaches to layout, typography, and visual communication. A lot of squares, circles, triangles and lines are used and often layered, overlapped, or arranged dynamically to create balance and structure. Symmetry and balance were important to contribute to a sense of harmony in some designs. In others, the aesthetic embraced asymmetry to create dynamic and engaging compositions, breaking from traditional symmetrical designs. The use of primary colors in designs like red, blue, and yellow alongside black, white, and gray was a signature feature, inspired by artists like Piet Mondrian, who used the primary colors and simplistic lines in their work. This kept the art simple, but the color was added in boldness with clean neutral colors around them to add form and structure.

This is one of Piet Mondrian’s last works called Broadway Boogie Woogie. I actually took this photo of this piece this past weekend when I was in New York at the MoMA. A lot of his work was in here and when I saw them, they all reminded me of Bauhaus. I recently started getting more into graphic design and learning about Bauhaus so this aesthetic is not new to me, but I hadn’t heard of him before so I decided to do some more research on Bauhaus and him and turns out they are connected. You can see a lot of the same characteristics in this art piece that Bauhaus uses. The primary colors and geometrics is what gives it away I think.

The impact of Bauhaus is still happening today, influencing modern design across creative fields, especially graphic design work. Bauhaus innovations in asymmetrical layouts, grids, and dynamic compositions are widely used in today’s digital and print design. The emphasis on visual hierarchy and clarity is foundational in UI/UX design, websites, and advertising. The idea “less is more” was introduced by Bauhaus and is a principle that strengthens modern minimalist design today.

Image Sources:
1. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/14847873764137902/, via Pinterest

2. https://archi-monarch.com/bauhaus-movement-in-architecture/, via Archi-Monarch

3. https://bauhauskooperation.com/knowledge/the-bauhaus/works/graphic-printshop/poster-for-the-1923-bauhaus-exhibition-in-weimar/, via bauhaus kooperation

4. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/706431891571114704/, via Pinterest

5. Piet Mondrian’s, Broadway Boogie Woogie

6. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/100-years-of-bauhaus-building-for-a-society-of-equals/, via People’s World