May | 2019 | Art Everyday

A trip to Germany with the Davis Museum of Art at Wellesley College included a tour of the Bauhaus in Dessau. It was an opportunity to see, in person, this important icon of 20^th century architecture and design.

A (very) brief history. In 1919, one hundred years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. The design aesthetic was lean and spare. It would influence modern design for years to come, 100 for sure. The Bauhaus was a school where designers, architects, painters, sculptors and craftsmen taught and built items. Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky worked there.

Nazi interference in 1924 made Gropius move the school to Dessau, a city southwest of Berlin. There, he built a campus consisting of the main building, a director’s house and three masters’ houses.

I’ve tried to capture some of the Bauhaus aesthetic like the exterior glass curtain-wall of the main building.

Bauhaus – Main Building

Bauhaus-Main Building

Bauhaus – Main Building

Construction details and color are all strikingly modern.

Bauhaus – Main Building

Furniture was constructed with tubular arms and legs. Door pulls were simple and unadorned.

Bauhaus – Main Building Auditorium Seats

Bauhaus – Main Building Door Detail

Rain-washed cement sidewalks seemed compatible with the tiny balconies.

Bauhaus – Main Building Balconies

The director’s house is a freestanding building. There are also three identical semi-detached houses for the masters. They are white stucco cubic structures designed by Gropius. They are modular with mirrored and rotated floor plans for variety. In the unadorned rooms light from windows, high and low, plays along the walls giving them an almost abstract quality as they intersect one another.

Master’s House

We take for granted much of what Gropius and his followers did to change the nature of design and architecture. What will the next hundred years look like?

Seven seemed like a good number for the Haiku Collage series. At least for the time being. Before moving on to something else I thought I would publish a blog with the collages completed since the first few described in “The Haiku Project” – December 2018.

If you remember, the project grew out of a desire to combine, as collage, my cut up prints and found paper with stenciled and cut paper words from haiku poems sent to me by friends. The collage was assembled on marbled paper that I made using the suminagashi technique (Japanese). To refresh your memory about the process of layering in making the collage go to December 2018 in the Archives at the side of the blog.

Here are the new haikus, each followed by the completed collage.

# 1349 Alice’s Haiku

In the library

For fifteen minutes or less

No charge for parking

Alice’s Haiku

Alice’s Haiku – detail

# 1350 Faye’s Haiku

Butterflies in flight

Light as air like free spirits

Spreading joy to all

Faye’s Haiku

Faye’s Haiku – detail

# 1351 Todd’s Haiku

The open dog park

Never the same love again

Without your loved ones

Todd’s Haiku

Todd’s Haiku – detail

# 1352 Kathleen’s Haiku

Realization

Comfort comes in many forms

Sit back let it in

Kathleen’s Haiku

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Bauhaus at 100

The Haiku Project Continues