The Bauhaus at Dessau

Between the two world wars, the Bauhaus Arts and Crafts School in Dessau offered German political leaders a unique opportunity to move away from the precipice by embracing advanced art theories.  A most profound collaboration between architects, painters, sculptors and designers had been developed by the modernist faculty at the Bauhaus.  Unfortunately, German leaders—including political, industrial, business and military—were blinded by the glare of nationalism and the result would be the condemnation of a powerful avant-garde movement in favor of a second trip to the precipice.  What are your thoughts on the following statement published in the 1919 Bauhaus Proclamation:  “Architects, painters and sculptors must recognize anew the composite character of a building as an entity.  Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which is has lost as ‘salon art’ …Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture ad sculpture and painting in one unity and which will rise one day toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.”

Bauhaus Dessau