Bauhaus-Archiv posters
Poster For Kandinsky's 60th Birthday
Herbert Bayer designed the poster for the Kandinsky exhibition in Dessau in 1926. The combination of text with photography and red bars, the slightly tilted arrangement: typical graphic elements of the 1920s are skillfully showcased here. The photo used was taken by portrait photographer Hugo Erfurth. In 1925, Bayer began photographing. At the same time, he started incorporating photographs into graphic design. Initially, the photos were treated like a geometric surface—as in this poster or the Bauhaus "Catalog of Samples." Later, Bayer perfected this into a combination of typography, symbols (such as dots or arrows), drawing, photography, and photomontage.
Poster Exhibition 1923 | Joost Schmidt
The poster for the Bauhaus exhibition in 1923 is a Bauhaus icon—and certainly the most famous Bauhaus graphic. The graphic designer Joost Schmidt adopted the stylized head from the Bauhaus emblem, which was designed by Oskar Schlemmer. He incorporated it into a composition of geometric shapes and correspondingly designed characters. The graphic appears to be playfully thrown together; the figure floats on the surface due to the leftward tilt. Overall, Joost Schmidt achieves a very harmonious overall form with his design. Comparable compositions were created by Oskar Schlemmer with his reliefs from these years.
Herbert Bayer designed seven advertising structures in 1924. Among them are the designs for a newspaper kiosk and a cigarette kiosk, which are located in the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.
Photography by T. Lux Feininger. This iconic black-and-white photograph shows Bauhaus students engaging in lively play in front of the distinctive Dessau Bauhaus building. This snapshot was taken by T. Lux Feininger – son of the Bauhaus master painter Lyonel Feininger – who documented the school photographically since the mid-1920s and created one of the most famous scenes of the Bauhaus with his image "Sport at the Bauhaus."
Poster Universal Alphabet - Herbert Bayer
"Attempt at a New Script" is the title of the text by Herbert Bayer from 1926 in the Bauhaus issue of the magazine Offset. The article is illustrated on page 399 with his design for a new "Alphabet." "Just as modern machines, architecture, and cinema are expressions of our modern times, so must script be," demands Bayer. Rigorous lowercase, simplicity, unity in construction, and composition in the primary forms of square and circle—these are his demands. These guidelines shape many Bauhaus designs around the year 1926. On the published sheet, two characters, the G and the K, are described as still unfinished. Bayer thus makes the design process visible.
A photo from the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin shows the view of the Bauhaus Dessau with the lettering designed by Herbert Bayer on the building. The lettering and the shadows of the letters mounted in front of the wall are set diagonally into the image. The original photo from the Bauhaus-Archiv collection was taken around 1930.
Made in Germany
Dimensions: 59.4 x 84.1 cm