Bauhaus: Art as Life

The largest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years, Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the world’s most famous modern art school. From avant-garde arts and crafts beginnings to a new model uniting art and technology, the Bauhaus’ utopian vision sought to change society in the aftermath of the First World War, to find a ‘new way of life’. This major new Barbican Art Gallery show presents the pioneering and diverse artistic production that make up the school’s turbulent fourteen-year history and delves into the subjects at the heart of the Bauhaus - art, design, people, society and culture.

Featuring a rich array of painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation art, Bauhaus: Art as Life will present exemplary works from such Bauhaus Masters as Josef and Anni Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy and Gunta Stölzl, alongside works by lesser-known artists and students.

Bauhaus: Art as Life traces the life of the school from its formative years in Weimar at the start of the Weimar Republic, to the move to a purpose-built campus in Dessau designed by founding director Walter Gropius to the Bauhaus’ subsequent dramatic closure in 1933, whilst led by eminent modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The exhibition will present over 250 original works, arranged in thematic sections, exploring all areas of Bauhaus art and life, from experiments in form and colour, prototypes for mass production and designs for new models of living, to light and space investigations realised through photography, kinetic sculpture and film. Bauhaus: Art as Life will be designed by acclaimed architects Carmody Groarke, creators of the Barbican Art Gallery’s dramatic The Surreal House exhibition installation, working in close collaboration with graphic designers APFEL. As well as drawing on the unparalleled collections of the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, other major lending institutions will include, among others, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou; the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation; Busch Reisinger Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Zentrum Paul Klee.

As one of Europe’s leading cross-arts centres the Barbican will embrace the spectrum of Bauhaus arts throughout its parallel public programme. A host of workshops, talks, films and performances will accompany a major Creative Learning initiative, the Bauhaus Summer School, an intensive two-week experimental school in July 2012 led by leading practitioners from all artistic backgrounds.

Bauhaus: Art is Life is a Barbican Art Gallery exhibition produced in co-operation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

For more information and to book tickets, click here
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=12409