Bauhaus Movement: Google Doodle Honors 100th Anniversary Of German Art, Design School

Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, a legendary school of art, architecture and modern design founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. The school relocated to Dessau and Berlin in 1925 and 1932 respectively. Google celebrated the occasion by designing a doodle to honor the institution which was also a school of thought for new-age artists and started the modern art movement.

Staatliches Bauhaus, more commonly known as the Bauhaus, has often been described as the single most influential modernist art school of the 20th century that left its impact on both Europe and the United States, even after being forced to close during the rise of Nazi Party in 1933. Its teachings were inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau and its many international trends, including the Jugendstil and Vienna Secession.

“Gropius envisioned the Bauhaus—whose name means ‘house of building’—as a merger of craftsmanship, the ‘fine’ arts, and modern technology. His iconic Bauhaus Building in Dessau was a forerunner of the influential ‘International Style,’ but the impact of the Bauhaus’s ideas and practices reached far beyond architecture. Students of the Bauhaus received interdisciplinary instruction in carpentry, metal, pottery, stained glass, wall painting, weaving, graphics, and typography, learning to infuse even the simplest functional objects [like the ones seen in today's Doodle] with the highest artistic aspirations,” a blogpost for Google Doodle said.

Google’s animated doodle showcased a rolling art show that aimed to highlight the intricate relation between an object's design and its function, including buildings, lamps and even cocktail glasses and coffee pots.

In a 1919 manifesto, Gropius explained he wanted artisans who created objects that were both beautiful and useful and, with that mission, aimed to set up an art school that "must return to the workshop.” With that goal, he hired faculty members like painters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, photographer and sculptor László Moholy-Nagy, graphic designer Herbert Bayer, industrial designer Marianne Brandt, and Marcel Breuer, who consciously steered away from ornamentation and instead focused on ways to combine minimalism with 20th century mass production techniques. Gropius' motto was “form follows function.”

"This world of mere drawing and painting of draughtsmen and applied artists must at long last become a world that builds," Gropius wrote. "When a young person who senses within himself a love for creative endeavor begins his career, as in the past, by learning a trade, the unproductive 'artist' will no longer be condemned to the imperfect practice of art because his skill is now preserved in craftsmanship, where he may achieve excellence."

Despite being disbanded, young artists shaped by Bauhaus returned to 29 countries, founding the New Bauhaus in Chicago, Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and White City in Tel Aviv. Some of them also took up leadership roles in the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Harvard School of Architecture, and the Museum of Modern Art.