Bauhaus Timeline

Listen to a recording of Walter Gropius speaking about architecture and the Bauhaus then view the relevant dates in the Bauhaus Timeline.

1919

Walter Gropius founds the Staatlisches Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany by merging the School of Arts and Crafts, closed since 1915, with Academy of Fine Arts which still existed. Gropius proposed that the two combine and he as the new director chose a new name, Bauhaus-House of Building.

Swiss painter Johannes Itten (1888-1967) developed the Preliminary Course as an innovative curriculum which gave all students a foundational knowledge of materials, composition, and color. This course differentiated the Bauhaus from other previous methods of teaching art.

Lionel Feininger creates the woodcut of a cathedral for the cover of the Bauhaus manifesto.

Gerhard Marcks sculptor appointed to teach.

Gertrud Grunow, musician, appointed to teach.

1920

Josef Albers enrolls in the Bauhaus.  Albers designed his famous window paintings for the Sommerfeld house and the Leipzig Grassi Museum.

Georg Muche, painter appointed to teach.

Wall painting workshop initially headed by Johannes Itten, then Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky.

1921

Stage workshop initially directed by Lothar Schreyer, then by Oskar Schlemmer.

Marcel Breuer studies at the carpentry workshop in the Bauhaus.

Oscar Schlemmer, painter appointed to teach.

Herbert Bayer enrolls in the Bauhaus.

Paul Klee, painter, appointed to teach.

Alfred Arndt enrolls as student.

1922

Wassily Kandinsky, painter appointed to teach.

Annelise (Anni) Elsa Frieda Fleischmann enrolls in the Bauhaus school. She meets Josef Albers.

Ise Franke meets Walter Gropius at a Bauhaus lecture that he presented in Hanover and successfully persuaded her to leave her job, finance, family and home to come with him to Weimar and join him in his life’s work.

1923

First extensive exhibition of the Weimar Bauhaus.

Cast ceramic workshop evolved and emerged with prototypes for serial production.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy appointed to teach.

Marianne Brandt enrolls as student at the Bauhaus.

1924

Josef Albers teaches the Preliminary Course

1925

Bauhaus transfers from Weimar to Dessau, Germany.  In Dessau, the Bauhaus came to its heyday. Here, the “Staatliches Bauhaus” became a “Hochschule für Gestaltung.”

Josef Albers, the first Bauhaus student, asked to join the faculty and become a Master.

Herbert Bayer becomes the head of newly founded workshop for printing and advertising.

Herbert Bayer creates an experimental typeface “Universal” which later developed into “Bauhaus” typeface in 1969-1975.

Marcel Breuer becomes the head of the carpentry/furniture workshop. Marcel Breuer designs Wassily Chair (aka Model B3 chair)

1927

Carl Fieger appointed Bauhaus teacher.

1928

Walter Gropius resigns the Bauhaus directorship. Hannes Meyer replaces him as Bauhaus Director (1928-1930)

László Moholy-Nagy leaves Bauhaus and establishes his own design studio in Berlin.

1929

Alfred Arndt becomes Bauhaus Master.

Herbert Bayer leaves the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin.

Photography became an official subject in Dessau.

1930

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Bauhaus becomes Director

1933

Third Reich rises to power. Nazi pressure closes the Bauhaus.

THE BAUHAUS DIASPORA

1933

The Gropius family moves to London.

Marcel Breuer moves to Budapest.

Paul Klee and family move to Switzerland.

Josef and Anni Albers, invited to the United States. Teach at Black Mountain College in N.C.

Alexander Schawinsky emigrates to Italy and co-designs Olivetti typewriter “Studio 42.”

1934

Walter Gropius sets up private practice in London in partnership with Maxwell Fry.

László Moholy-Nagy moves to London.

Marcel Breuer moves to London.

Hampstead’s Lawn Road flats, the first modernist building of its kind, now named the Isokon Building, designed by architect Welles Coates, opened in July 1934.

1935

Marcel Breuer designs the “Long Chair” for Isokon.

1936

Herbert Bayer designed a brochure for the 1936 Berlin Olympic.

Alexander Schawinsky moves to United States. Teaches at Black Mountain College in NC.

1937

Walter Gropius accepts position as Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (1938-1952)

Paul Klee shows seventeen art works in “Degenerate Art” show. One hundred and two works of art were seized the Nazis.

Marcel Breuer joins Gropius to teach architecture at Harvard University.

László Moholy-Nagy moves to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus.

1938

Herbert Bayer emigrates to the US and lives in New York City.

MOMA Bauhaus Exhibit.

The Gropiuses build the Lincoln House

Walter Gropius in private practice with Marcel Breuer.

1939

László Moholy-Nagy opens the School of Design, that later became a part of Illinois Institute of Technology.

1941

Xanti Schawinsky moves to New York City and teaches at City College.

1946

Walter Gropius. Founding partner and active project principal of The Architects Collaborative, Cambridge Massachusetts.

Walter Gropius recommends Serge Chermayeff  to replace Moholy- Nagy in Chicago.

Herbert Bayer moves to Colorado, designs the Aspen Institute, and restores the Wheeler Opera House.

Marcel Breuer moves to New York City.

1947

Marcel Breuer builds Breuer House I in New Canaan, CT.

Gropius in Berlin for the first time after WWII

Gropius returns to Berlin, representing TAC, as a consultant to the Department of Army planning for reconstruction of a devastated Germany.

1950

Josef Albers. Chairman of the Department of Design at the Yale University School of Art. 1950-1958.

TAC designed and planned the entire campus for the University of Baghdad starting the late 1950s, a project not fully realized.

1951

Marcel Breuer builds Breuer House II in New Canaan, CT.

1956

Walter Gropius returns to England to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) award.

1958

Pan AM Building – Architects Emory Roth and Sons with Walter Gropius and Alex Cvijanovic of TAC, and Pietro Belluschi as consultants.

1961

Xanti Schawinsky works as a costume and stage designer for Theater Basel.

1963

Marcel Breuer begins design for the Whitney Museum’s Madison Ave. building (now MET Breuer.)

1964

Bauhaus Archives – TAC architects Alex Cvijanovic and Walter Gropius

1965

Marcel Breuer designs HUD office (now Robert C. Weaver Federal Building) in Washington DC.

1967

Thomas Glass Factory, Amberg, Germany. TAC architect Alex Cvijanovic.

1968

Rosenthal china commission. TAC- Walter Gropius, Louis McMillen, and Katherine Sousa designers.

1968 Grope Fest Celebration. Cambridge Mass.

1969

Walter Gropius, age 86, dies on July 5 in Boston.

1970

Metallisches Fest in honor of Walter Gropius’s life. Cambridge Mass.

1971

Josef Albers was the first living artist ever to be honored with a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

2006

Hungarian University of Arts and Design became Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in honor of László Moholy-Nagy.