bauhaus.typography / bauhaus.typography

The Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design in Berlin has one of the most extensive collections of typographic works from the Bauhaus. With the selection shown here, we would like to provide insights into this rich collection and illustrate the diverse possibilities and multifaceted use of this medium at the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus - probably the most important avant-garde school of the 20th century, founded in Weimar in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius, relocated to Dessau in 1925 and closed in Berlin in 1933 under pressure from the National Socialists - offers numerous associations and points of contact for anyone interested in architecture and design. The Bauhaus workshops created modern objects for a new world of life, from everyday objects to homes. Quite a few designs, especially in the areas of furniture and architecture, achieved historical significance.

Typography played an important role right from the founding of the Bauhaus. In the early years it was still influenced by the expressive calligraphic imagery of Johannes Itten. The Bauhaus, particularly through its teachers László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt, contributed to the spread of the so-called New Typography. Used primarily for self-promotion for the school and its products, but also increasingly for commissioned work, the works are often characterized by a clear type area, the use of concise typographic characters, strong contrasts in color, size and position, standardized formats and the interpenetration of image and text.