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INVENTORY OF THE BAUHAUS TYPOGRAPHY COLLECTION, 1919-1937
850513
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Title: Bauhaus typography collection
Date (inclusive): 1919-1937
Number: 850513
Creator/Collector:
Bauhaus
Physical Description:
2.92 linear feet
(4 boxes)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, California, 90049-1688
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: A collection of printing published by the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1933, designed by Bauhaus teachers and students for internal
school purposes and for outside commercial use, as well as other printing relating to the Bauhaus. The collection comprises
a wide variety of printed matter, from ephemeral publications to whole issues of periodicals and exhibition catalogs, which
are exemplary of what became identified as Bauhaus style typography and design. Most items were designed by Herbert Bayer,
László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, and Joost Schmidt. Other designers represented in this collection include Josef Albers,
Erich Comeriner, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Häberer, Dörte Helm, and Xanti Schawinsky.
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Language: Collection material is in German
Biographical / Historical Note
The Bauhaus was known for its innovative teaching methods and new approach towards art, architecture, and crafts. It was founded
in 1919 in Weimar with the city's financial support. In 1928, due to loss of funding, it moved to Dessau where it remained
in operation until 1932. The school reopened for a short time in Berlin, but was closed in 1933 by the newly formed Nazi government.
László Moholy-Nagy attempted to revive Bauhaus teachings in Chicago in 1937.
Under its first director, the German architect Walter Gropius, new methods of instruction were developed at the Bauhaus based
on the premise that art, crafts, and architecture must unite with technology and modern industry geared towards mass production,
not only to meet the needs of society, but also to create and shape a new lifestyle. The ideas taught at the Bauhaus and the
artistic output of its students and teachers contributed significantly to subsequent developments in architecture, art, industrial
and interior design, graphic design and typography. Gropius led the Bauhaus until 1928. His successor was the Swiss architect
Hannes Meyer, known for his new functionalist approach to architecture and political views leaning towards Communism. Under
political pressure, Meyer was forced to resign in 1930. He was replaced by the German architect Mies van der Rohe.
During the Weimar years typography increasingly gained prominence in the work of the Bauhaus teacher László Moholy-Nagy and
his student, the graphic designer Herbert Bayer, but a formal workshop for typography was not part of the Bauhaus until 1925.
After the school's relocation to Dessau, under Bayer's charge, the newly installed workshop developed into a professional
studio for graphic design and commercial art. The study of the communicative potential of letterforms and typographic layout
was part of a basic curriculum in the mechanics of visual education. Such innovations as the elimination of capital letters,
and the replacement of the archaic Gothic alphabet used in German printing by a modern "cosmopolitan" font, and the concept
of composition based on strong geometrical elements and expressive values of colors, testify to a move away from individually
handcrafted and traditionally shaped goods towards objects meeting functional requirements suitable for mass production. In
this regard, what became known as Bauhaus typography was also part of the social and political reform taking place at the
school.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
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Bauhaus typography collection, 1919-1937, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 850513
Acquired in 1985.
The collection was first processed after being acquired in 1985. Isabella Zuralski reprocessed the collection in 2008-2009
and wrote the finding aid.
Scope and Content of Collection
This collection comprises mostly ephemeral printing published by the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1933, designed by Bauhaus teachers
and students for internal school purposes and for outside commercial use, as well as some other printing relating to the Bauhaus.
Most items were designed by Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, and Joost Schmidt. Other designers are Josef
Albers, Rudolf Baschant, Erich Comeriner, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Häberer, Josef Hartwig, Dörte Helm, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack,
Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Wolfgang (Farkas) Molnár, Xanti Schawinsky, Kurt Schmidt, Georg Teltschner,
Jan Tschichold, and the designer group Studio Z (Franz Ehrlich, Heinz Loew, Fritz Winter). The collection comprises a wide
variety of types of printed matter: advertisements, announcements, book covers, broadsides, brochures, currency, forms, exhibition
announcements and catalogs, invitations, letterheads, manifestoes, memos, pamphlets, periodicals, postcards, programs, prospectuses,
school curricula, tickets, and trade catalogs. Bauhaus School letterheads include incidental correspondence of Walter Gropius,
Hannes Meyer, and others. Also present are issues of student publications
Der Austausch and
Bauhaus, Sprachrohr der Studierenden.
The collection is organized into five series. The first three series correspond with the two relocations of the school from
Weimar to Dessau and from Dessau to Berlin, and are organized within each series chronologically by year. This arrangement
follows the development of Bauhaus typography and graphic design in the context of the aesthetic and political changes taking
place at the school, from its early ties to Expressionism to Walter Gropius's radical turn towards a new style of architecture
and the design of consumer goods which are functional, inexpensive and consistent with mass production. The last two series
comprise examples of Bauhaus typography in the work of individual Bauhaus arists and designers, and in various types of Bauhaus
publications. Largely assembled by Walter Dexel, the German artist associated with Constructivism, this collection served
as the basis for Gerd Fleischmann's 1984 publication
Bauhaus: Drucksachen, Typografie, Reklame [Düsseldorf : Marzona, 1984.] Page references to items included in Fleischmann's book are given at the end of scope and contents
notes.
Organized in five series: I. Weimar, 1919-1925; II. Dessau, 1925-1932; III. Berlin, 1932-1933; IV. Bauhaus artists and designers,
1919-1937; V. Bauhaus publications, 1924-1937.
Bauhaus
Furniture design--Germany--20th century
Graphic arts--Germany--20th century
Graphic design (Typography)--Germany--20th century
Printing--Germany--20th century
Advertisements--Germany--20th century
Book jackets--Germany--20th century
Forms (documents)--Germany--20th century
Invitations--Germany--20th century
Letterheads--Germany--20th century
Lithographs--Germany--20th century
Offset lithographs--Germany--20th century
Postcards--Germany--20th century
Printed ephemera--Germany--20th century
Prospectuses--Germany--20th century
Woodcuts--Germany--20th century
Albers, Josef
Baschant, Rudolf, 1897-1955
Bayer, Herbert, 1900-1985
Comeriner, Erich
Dexel, Walter, 1890-1973
Ehrlich, Franz, 1907-1984
Feininger, Lyonel, 1871-1956
Gropius, Walter, 1883-1969
Hartwig, Josef, 1880-1955
Helm, Dörte, 1898-1941
Hirschfeld-Mack, Ludwig
Häberer, Paul, 1902-
Itten, Johannes, 1888-1967
Kandinsky, Wassily, 1866-1944
Klee, Paul, 1879-1940
Kreis der Freunde des Bauhauses
Loew, Heinz
Marcks, Gerhard
Meyer, Hannes, 1889-1954
Moholy-Nagy, László, 1895-1946
Molnár, Farkas, 1897-1945
Schawinsky, Xanti, 1904-
Schlemmer, Oskar, 1888-1943
Schmidt, Joost, 1893-1948
Schmidt, Kurt, 1901-1991
Stam-Beese, Lotte, 1903-1988
Studio Z (Firm)
Teltschner, Georg, 1904-1983
Tschichold, Jan, 1902-1974
Winter, Fritz, 1905-1976