20th Century Design Bauhaus

The Bauhaus also known as the Staatliches Bauhaus was an art school situated in Germany that combined fine arts as well as the crafts. This school was significantly famous for the move towards design which it both taught and publicized[1]. The Bauhaus school which means ‘building house’ was initially founded by Walter Groupius in 1919 at Weimar. The term Bauhaus means, “house of construction” and was founded with the notion of “total” work of art. The movement was set on embracing the 20^th century culture of using machines where buildings and design were accomplished in a utilitarian way. It encouraged the embracing of modern technology. The syllabus taught focused on both artistry and crafts a connection between theory and practice. The understanding of basic design was paramount with principles of craftsmanship, composition and color theory. It is a significant understatement to state that the current state of the graphic design industry tends to owe a lot to the Bauhaus movement.

The works of art included architecture which would eventually be bridged and the Bauhaus style with time became one of the most influential currents in contemporary design[2]. The Bauhaus had a reflective influence upon the succeeding developments in architecture, art, interior design, typography, industrial design and graphic design. Another interesting fact about the Bauhaus is that, the continuous changes in leadership and venue also resulted in an unvarying shift of focus, politics, and techniques. For instance, the pottery shop was terminated when the school was moved from Weimer to Dessau; this was so even though the pottery shop was an important source of revenue[3]. This paper discusses the extent to which designers and artists realized their aims of social improvement through art and design during the first three decades of the 20^th Century as well as movements such as Supermatism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus and early modern movement in architecture.

Artists and designers during the first three decades of the 20^th century were influenced by modernism in realizing their aims of social improvement through art and design. Modernism refers to the philosophical movement by which, along with various cultural changes and trends arose from far reaching and also a wide scale revolutions in the western society during the late 19^th Century and the early 20^th Century[4]. Modernism generally includes the various creations and activities of the artists who felt that the long-established designs of art, social organization, architecture, religious faith, literature the sciences, philosophy and also the activities of daily lives were becoming ill-fitted to their respective tasks. As such, they felt significantly obsolete in the new social, economic as well as political environment of an up-coming industrialized world[5]. Some notable traits of modernism are self-consciousness which often led to the conducting of various experiments with form. This was also coupled up with utilization of procedures that showed the materials and processes utilized in the creation of poems, building, and also painting.