bauhaus
imaginista
●Edition 2: Learning From
Article

Diagonal. Pointé. Carré

Goodbye Bauhaus? Otti Berger’s Designs for Wohnbedarf AG Zurich

Bauhaus Dessau, curtain fabric made of artificial silk and cotton, designed by Otti Berger, ca. 1931–32.
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, photo: Judith Raum.

Gunta Stölzl. Anni Albers. These are the most prominent names today when one thinks of actors in the Bauhaus textile workshop. Both had been involved in the textile workshop since Weimar times, shaping it through their understanding of textiles and their teaching. Stölzl was the only female form master at the Bauhaus to give the workshop an artistic and conceptual profile. Otti Berger, who came from Croatia, did not join the workshop until Dessau. Although almost the same age, initially she was a pupil of Stölzl. Stölzl and Albers succeeded in leaving Germany in 1931–32. And they succeeded—albeit in the case of Gunta Stölzl, under sometimes difficult financial conditions—in continuing to work as textile designers and artists, each developing a specific working practice and establish an extensive oeuvre. 

Fig. 1
Illustration of Otti-Berger fabrics in International Textiles, August 1934, photo: Ernst Nipkow (?).

Otti Berger, who came from Croatia, did not join the workshop until Dessau. Although almost the same age, initially she was a pupil of Stölzl. Stölzl and Albers succeeded in leaving Germany in 1931–32. And they succeeded—albeit in the case of Gunta Stölzl, under sometimes difficult financial conditions—in continuing to work as textile designers and artists, each developing a specific working practice and establish an extensive oeuvre. Berger succeeded in doing this after she had passed her journeyman's examination in 1930 and receiving her diploma from the Bauhaus. Many of her letters testify, however, to her ongoing struggle for recognition and fair remuneration for her design work and attribution in publication and sale of her designs. After a phase of artistic collaboration with Saxon and Silesian textile companies, in the autumn of 1932 Berger opened her own “atelier für textilien / stoffe für kleidung und wohnen möbel- wandstoffe bodenbelag” (atelier for textiles / fabrics for apparel and living furniture wall coverings floor coverings) in Berlin, which she also referred to as a “Laboratorium” because she attached particular importance to experimenting with the loom: for each fabric developed she created a separate concept, meaning she always found it necessary to also create a new, specially selected warp.1 From her Berlin atelier, Berger designed collections for several textile manufacturers in Germany and abroad, including for the colorful collections of the Dutch curtain weaver De Ploeg in Bergejk and the horsehair weaver Schriever in Dresden, for whom she developed a highly durable double weave2 made of artificial horsehair as upholstery material for use in airplanes, trains and ocean-going vessels, which she also patented. In 1935 Berger was refused membership of the Reichskammer der Künste on account of her Jewish ancestry, and in 1936 she was banned from working as an artisan. Compelled to leave the country, at Walter Gropius’ suggestion, in the autumn of 1937 she moved to England, where she had sporadic contact with textile companies but was unable to gain a professional foothold save for a five-week period of employment at the Helios Ltd. textile company in Bolton near Manchester.3 The following autumn she elected to return to continental Europe in order to be close to her mother in Yugoslavia who was seriously ill—she would not escape the coming conflagration. Her partner at the time, the architect Ludwig Hilberseimer, had successfully emigrated to the United States in 1938. László Moholy-Nagy was also there, and had promised Berger a management position at the textile workshop of the New Bauhaus in Chicago. From Yugoslavia Berger applied unsuccessfully for an exit visa to travel to the US. The last she was heard from was in 1941. In April 1944 she was murdered in Auschwitz.

Fig. 2
Two-sided portiere by Otti Berger, one side glossy, the other matt, ca. 1931-33. Photo: Ernst Nipkow. Harvard Art Museums / Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge MA, photo: Lara Smirek.

These biographical details are important to me as they underline a certain urgency in turning to Berger’s work. It was not only the textile medium itself that received a delayed recognition within (Bauhaus) art historiography: attention was first paid to those designers still living in the 1980s and thus able to provide a firsthand account of their work. For example, Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers still had the opportunity to donate or sell their functional fabrics and free textile works to museums and collections in order to give them lasting significance,4 or their heirs did this for them. In addition, for a long time only those textiles that had been created during the “Bauhaus period” of the individual weavers were given attention. The works of the later years—although when viewed in detail they often represent reinterpretations or further developments of designs from the Bauhaus period—were rather neglected. Most of Berger’s preserved works fall into this category, consisting mainly of fabrics designed in the period after leaving the Dessau Bauhaus.

What I would like to do at this point is to look at two collections of curtain fabrics that Otti Berger developed: one designed for the bauhaus brand and dating from 1932, during the time she worked as a teacher at the textile workshop at Bauhaus Dessau; the other dating from between 1932 and 1933 when she was a contract employee of the Swiss interior design company Wohnbedarf AG5 in Zurich, which was founded in 1931. This comparison makes clear to what extent Berger’s functionally-oriented view of textile production developed within the textile workshop of the Bauhaus (an orientation Berger herself, as a teacher in the textile workshop in 1931–32, was significantly involved in articulating), had an influence on Berger's later work. But it also shows where she broke new aesthetic ground in her later textile designs.

Both curtain fabric collections shown here contained different types of quality fabrics, differing according to price range and function (light curtain fabrics, heavy curtain fabrics or blackout curtains). Within both collections, Berger’s interest in precisely selected weaves,6 which accentuate the qualities of the yarn used, such as shine, suppleness or irregularity of twist,7 created fabrics that manage without a “pattern” and whose surfaces became an animated effect. In her later designs this was accompanied by an artistic stubbornness that could only be echoed in the last curtain fabric collection of the Bauhaus, co-designed by Lilly Reich.

A black-and-white photo of four fabric patterns provides the introduction. (Fig. 1) This is a full-page illustration from the August 1934 issue of the magazine International Textiles, published in London. The illustration is also captioned: “Otti Berger fabrics for Wohnbedarf, Zurich.” The fact Berger was named in the caption is remarkable, as this was preceded by a lengthy dispute between herself and Rudolf Graber, owner of Wohnbedarf AG since 1933, over the use of their name in advertising and sale of Wohnbedarf fabrics, as well as outstanding royalty payments. It becomes clear from a letter Berger sent to Oskar Schlemmer8 that Wohnbedarf AG had not yet agreed to grant Berger attribution for her fabrics—at least until the end of 1933. Berger wrote Schlemmer that she will remain unyielding on this point, even at the risk of damaging her business relationship with Switzerland. For the hard trades (furniture, building), other designers had already succeeded in receiving attribution—Marcel Breuer, for example, whom Berger mentions in her letter to Schlemmer. In the commercial textile field, appreciation of authorship—as Berger’s struggle shows—seemed less than self-evident to her contemporaries. The cooperation between Wohnbedarf AG and Berger had first developed in the spring of 1933 after Walter Gropius recommended Berger’s work to Sigfried Giedion.9 This was a bitter blow for Gunta Stölzl,10 who was at the time struggling to establish herself as a textile designer in Switzerland and had initially signed a contract for textile designs with Wohnbedarf AG; the company probably dissolved its relationship with Stölzl in favor of working with Berger. And it seems that Berger's business relationship was successful initially. Fabrics by Berger for Wohnbedarf AG were shown together with furniture by Alvar Aalto in a sales exhibition at Wohnbedarf AG’s Zurich branch in May 1934. She was also involved in the interior design of the cinema “Corso” in Zurich, for which she created at least one covering fabric for the theater’s bar, and her work was featured in advertisements for Otti-Berger-Stoffe bei Wohnbedarf AG that appeared in international magazines. Her letter to Oskar Schlemmer makes it clear, however, that Berger felt badly treated. As she reports, her Wohnbedarf AG contract had already been “dissolved” by the end of 1936.

Fig. 3
Sample for the portiere designed by Otti Berger in a sample book for Wohnbedarf AG. Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, photo: Judith Raum.

Returning to the fabric advertisement in International Textiles, for this advertising campaign it was not actual curtains that were photographed in situ but individual pieces of fabric, the edges still unhemmed in order to give an impression of thickness or fineness, shine and brittleness. The pieces of fabric were draped and lit for the photographs, creating folds and contours where the light can play across the fabric’s surface. The photographs thus reveal something about the shiny or dull, opaque or transparent quality of each individual textile.11

The selection of curtains used in the advertising includes a light, washable curtain made of bourette silk (bottom), two dense curtains made of artificial silk—of which the dark one is intended as a darkening curtain (middle)—and a two-sided portiere, i.e., a dividing curtain to hang between two rooms, whose heavy fabric is shiny on one side and matte gloss on the other (top).

There is a second photo of the portiere taken by Ernst Nipkow: only this fabric can be seen here. (Fig. 2) The relationship between matte and glossy yarns and the relief-like diagonal stripes produced by the weave running across the entire width of the fabric are particularly evident in this photograph. A small sample of the portiere (only about 10 x 10 cm in size) is part of Otti Berger’s work for Wohnbedarf AG preserved at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. (Fig. 3) The fabric is of a cream white color, made from artificial silk yarn in the warp and shiny, untwisted artificial silk filament as well as matte wool bouclé yarn in the weft.12 Otti Berger preferred to use the then popular artificial silk filaments in her textiles. She often let the barely twisted yarns float over longer distances, i.e., run unbound over several warp or weft threads, so the fine filaments would spread smoothly.13 The contrasts in the present portiere are created by the partly curly, partly smooth yarns, and by the extreme luster of some yarns and the dull effect of individual yarns. Dancing, shiny dots, which appear on one side within the deeper stripes, make the fabric appear lighthearted despite all its elegance and heaviness. The fact that some of the relatively wide diagonal stripes are raised above the surface gives the curtain fabric something of a knitted appearance—a tendency towards crossing over between different craft disciplines that is often found in Berger’s designs, and which makes this portiere an idiosyncratic interpretation of the functional fabric typically used in separation curtains.

Fig. 5
Contemporary black-and-white photograph of Otti Berger's shiny curtain fabric, photo: Anonymous, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne.

Heavy, noble fabrics for windows or for room division—which, like the portiere shown here, were supposed to provide sound and temperature insulation—were generally the most expensive products within a curtain fabric collection, while the cheapest products in terms of price were simple and thin curtain fabrics made of cotton or artificial silk. The collection of woven curtain fabrics developed in 1932 by the textile workshop of the Bauhaus, the so-called “Raschkollektion,”14 contained precisely this gradation of different fabrics according to quality and price: first, at a lower price level a series of simple and inconspicuous thin curtains made of cotton or artificial silk, valorized purely by structural effects; then a series of curtain fabrics which, while aiming for a noble effect through luster and extravagant color combinations, were still relatively light; and finally, a selection of heavy curtain fabrics with complex weave patterns woven from unusual materials (lustrous or textured yarns) that were correspondingly expensive. Lilly Reich, who succeeded Gunta Stölzl as the head of the textile workshop at the beginning of 1932, determined the aesthetic formulation of this fabric collection. In her role as head of the textile workshop, Otti Berger was responsible for the technical weaving and artistic implementation of Reich’s ideas in practical workshop operations. Reich, who lacked knowledge of weaving techniques (her expertise lay in furniture and interior design, preferably using textiles) and Berger did not work together without friction. To some extent, the standards that both applied to their joint work were clearly far apart, as a report Berger penned on the development of the curtain fabric collection in question shows. Berger was particularly irritated by Reich’s recklessness regarding the use of expensive raw materials.15 The relationship between the two was permanently disturbed in 1933 when, as Berger reports, at the instigation of Reich she was the only one not to have been invited to Mies van der Rohe’s fiftieth birthday “with all the Bauhäusler.”16

Fig. 4
Bauhaus Dessau, curtain fabric made of artificial silk and cotton, designed by Otti Berger, ca. 1931–32, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, photo: Judith Raum.

Fig. 6
Bauhaus curtain fabric nr 201/3, cotton, design: Anonymous, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, photo: Judith Raum.

Loose samples of some fabrics from the collection of woven Bauhaus curtain fabrics from 1932 have been preserved in the Archiv der Moderne in Weimar. One of the curtains, demonstrably designed by Berger, can be seen as a forerunner or source of ideas for the portiere’s fabric just discussed. (Fig. 4) Several color combinations of the fabric existed—the one shown here is the cream-white variant. In this fabric, too, Berger used a weave repeat17 producing diagonal stripes in the fabric which run across the entire width of the fabric, enlivening the surface with elevations and depressions; she chose yarns—among them again a variant of viscose multifilament, which she also had floated here—that contrast with one another due to their sometimes curly, sometimes smooth texture. Seen from a certain distance, the stripes, which are much narrower here, tend to merge, giving the impression of a compact yet structured surface. The exclusive use of artificial silk in the weft makes this curtain fabric shine evenly on both sides—unlike the portieres—an effect well illustrated in a contemporary photograph of the fabric. (Fig. 5)

Fig. 7
Detail of the woven bauhaus curtain fabric nr 201/3, cotton, design: Anonymous, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Archiv der Moderne, photo: Judith Raum.

In the Bauhaus collection of woven curtain fabrics, the main dictum was to create standard patterns for interior design18—i.e., fabrics of lasting elegance and maximum durability. Something of the aesthetic restraint associated with this standard radiates from the fabric of the Bauhaus era. In portiere textiles designed for Wohnbedarf AG, on the other hand, more unconventional details and a certain extravagance come to the fore. Whether this material is a testimony to Berger’s willingness to experiment in her laboratory or indicates rather that designs for Wohnbedarf AG were aimed at an affluent clientele remains an open question.

Parallels in the perception of individual curtain fabric types can also be seen in the simplest fabrics of the two collections mentioned. A sample of a thin cotton curtain fabric preserved in Weimar illustrates how the textile workshop at the Bauhaus under Lilly Reich imagined good, practicable and affordable curtains for a modern living space.19 The fabric was dyed in a light brown shade, and other colors existed as well. The special weave and an over-twisted yarn20 create a dancing effect of individual vertical threads, appearing on the surface of the fabric as possessing a uniform alternation of height and offset, reviving the surface. (Fig. 6)

Fig. 7a
Sample of a bourette fabric by Otti Berger in a sample book for Wohnbedarf AG, ca. 1933, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, photo: Judith Raum. 

Fig. 8
​House Schminke, view of the winter garden with curtain fabric by Otti Berger. Photo: Ernst Nipkow. Harvard Art Museums / Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA, photo: Lara Smirek. 

Among the curtain fabrics developed by Berger for Wohnbedarf AG was a comparably simple type of window curtain made of bourette silk. (Fig. 7) Berger also developed several color combinations for it, some with mottled yarn, others with non-mottled yarn. When seen against the light, a fabric made of bourette silk has a slightly translucent character, making it unsuitable as a blackout curtain. In addition, when irregularly spun the structure created by the weave of bourette silk optically enlivens the fabric. A comparable curtain fabric appears in a photograph Ernst Nipkow took for Berger in the Schminke House in Löbau, designed by Hans Scharoun in 1930 and completed in 1933 (Fig. 8), for which the architect had entrusted Berger with designing the furniture and curtain fabrics. In the photo, the camera looks from the sofa corner towards an adjacent glassed-in conservatory. Berger had placed a fabric that combined both separation curtain and sun curtain made of slightly translucent quality made between the living room and the conservatory. The vivid structure of the fabric, seen against the light, shows in the photograph. When backlit the light brown cotton fabric from the Bauhaus collection of curtain fabrics from 1932 was designed to produce a similar effect. (Fig. 6)

I wanted to show with my observation that a targeted, conceptual thinking through of individual types of utility materials had continuity in the work of Bauhaus graduates like Otti Berger—whether in Bauhaus times or after their departure from the institution. From my point of view, it is therefore urgently necessary to finally turn more to the post-Bauhaus creative phases.

●Footnotes
  • 1 In the construction of a fabric, the warp or warp threads are those threads which are stretched lengthwise in the loom. The weft threads are then woven at right angles between the fixed warp threads. Since it is extremely time-consuming to wind up a new warp and thread the individual threads in the loom one strand at a time, different fabrics are often woven on the same warp (e.g. a simple cotton warp). Otti Berger, on the other hand, liked to choose specific warps for the fabrics she had in mind in order to precisely influence the properties of the fabric through the choice of material. See her notes on teaching in the textile workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Otti Berger, Folder No. 4.
  • 2 A double weave is a kind of woven textile in which two or more sets of warps and one or more sets of weft or filling yarns are interconnected to form a two-layered cloth.
  • 3 At Helios Ltd., Berger spent five weeks representing the Swiss textile designer Marianne Straub, who after many years of service became managing director in 1947.
  • 4 Or, to put it another way, in the case of Gunta Stölzl: There was still enough opportunity for clever collectors to buy her fabric samples from the Bauhaus period (there was no interest in Stölzl’s later fabrics, the Swiss phase).
  • 5 Wohnbedarf AG was founded in 1931 by the architectural theorist Sigfried Giedion together with Werner Max Moser and Rudolf Graber. The company produced tubular steel furniture, carpets and fabrics designed by both Swiss and European designers. The firm operated a showroom located on the Talstraße in Zurich. Marcel Breuer was responsible for the design of these showrooms. Later, a second branch was opened in Basel. Designers such as Alfred Roth, Marcel Breuer and Aalvar Alto supplied designs for Wohnbedarf AG. Its products were high-end and could be compared with the products of contemporary firms such as Knoll Inc.
  • 6 The way in which threads cross, or how many of them come to lie at the top and bottom of a woven fabric is called the weave. The basic weave types are the plain weave, the twill weave and the atlas weave.
  • 7 Twisting is a yarn finishing process in which two or more individual threads, or several strands of twisted thread, are twists are twisted together. A distinction can be made depending on the intended use: smooth twisted yarns are mainly produced to improve tensile strength and uniformity, while fancy yarns are intended to embellish a fabric or to enliven its pattern.
  • 8 Cf. Otti Berger to Oskar Schlemmer, 10 December 1933, Oskar Schlemmer Archive. I wish to thank Magdalena Droste for kindly providing a copy of the letter.
  • 9 Cf. Walter Gropius to Gunta Stölzl, 29 July 1933, Walter Gropius Estate, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin (accessible online).
  • 10 In September 1931, Gunta Stölzl, together with Gertrud Preiswerk and Heinrich Otto Hürlimann, founded the handloom S-P-H-Stoffe in Zurich. In 1932 S-P-H-Stoffe was supplying Wohnbedarf AG with fabrics for interior furnishings, but as early as 1933, however, S-P-H-Stoffe had to be liquidated due to a losses incurred due to its contract with Wohnbedarf AG. Wohnbedarf AG had “ordered too much fabric and is now complaining about quality,” as Stölzl wrote to her brother on 22 July 1933. The contract between Otti Berger and Wohnbedarf AG was concluded at the beginning of 1933, and the company presumably terminated the connection with S-P-H fabrics in spite of its pending orders. (See Magdalena Droste/Bauhaus Archiv Berlin: Gunta Stölzl, Weberei am Bauhaus und aus eigener Werkstatt, Berlin 1987, p. 34, and Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau: Gunta Stölzl. Meisterin am Bauhaus Dessau, Hatje, Stuttgart 1997, p. 256.) Although Gunta Stölzl had always held Otti Berger in high esteem on a professional level. She had already offered Berger her representation in the textile workshop of the Bauhaus Dessau in the summer of 1930 and, after her departure from the Bauhaus, had issued her with a letter of recommendation addressed to her successor. However, the two were not close friends and from 1932 onwards, as far as is known, were not in personal contact. Stölzl expressed her displeasure with Berger’s working for Wohnbedarf AG to Gropius, but never, as far as is known, to Berger personally. With other mutual acquaintances Berger inquired about Stölzl’s career in 1936 (see letter to Oskar Schlemmer dated 21 November 1936).
  • 11 Berger actively used the medium of photography to disseminate her designs—on the one hand by appearing in magazines but mostly to use photography to emphasize the special characteristics of her fabrics, in which the effect of the structure produced by the weave in combination with precisely selected yarns was the important thing. For the visual dissemination of her work she collaborated with renowned photographers such as Ernst Nipkow and Walter Süßmann, who emphasized the distinctive characteristics of Berger’s work through macro-photography and the use of light and shadow, which had initially been developed by the photography department of the Bauhaus in conjunction with products designed in its textile workshop. (On the relationship between Bauhaus weaving and photography, see also T’ai Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory. From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2014).
  • 12 The term “filament” refers to the fine, infinitely long hair or threads (filaments) that were shot from nozzles to produce the viscose-based artificial silk of the time. Filament yarns (yarns made from countless fine filaments) differ from staple fiber yarns consisting of shorter fibers of different lengths spun together. Bouclé yarns are fancy yarns which have irregular thickenings or loops due to a special twist along the yarn.
  • 13 Cellulose-based artificial silk were produced beginning in the 1880s. Finally, individual filaments—wafer-thin threads—could be obtained from nozzles, which were then combined into so-called “multifilaments.” Often, according to fashion at the time, these were not twisted (i.e. twisted into each other) or twisted only slightly. The yarns thus look like silky strands of smooth, fine hair lying next to each other. Floating threads are threads that are not bound into the fabric for a certain distance. Fabrics with long floats are generally more supple and amenable to draping.
  • 14 The fabrics for this collection were developed in coordination with the appearance of the Bauhaus wallpaper, which were produced by Rasch & Co in Bramsche, Germany, starting from 1929.
  • 15 See a note by Berger entitled “What had been agreed?,” Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Folder 17, Otti Berger.
  • 16 See footnote 7.
  • 17 The binding repeat is the repeating system according to which a binding is designed. It leads to a certain, regular patterning in the surface of the fabric.
  • 18 See the article about the collection of woven Bauhaus curtain fabrics in the magazine Koralle, No. 12, 1933, p. 544.
  • 19 That Otti Berger was the creator of this fabric cannot be proven with certainty, but she was in charge of the development of the entire collection.
  • 20 Over-twisting during twisting, i.e. deliberately strong twisting, gives the thread an unsteady effect.
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The story of Lena Bergner is relevant to the history of architecture and design on account of her career passing through different ideological and cultural contexts. Here we will discuss her life and work, focusing on her training in the Bauhaus, her time in the USSR and her time in Mexico, where, along with her husband the architect Hannes Meyer, over a ten-year period she undertook cultural projects of great importance. → more

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Of Art and Politics — Hannes Meyer and the Workshop of Popular Graphics

The Mexico of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was a fertile ground for the development of ideological questions, especially those originating from the left. The expropriation of oil fields, mining and large estates in 1938, the refuge granted Spanish republicans and members of the International Brigades in 1939, and the accord of mutual support between the government and syndicalist organizations all favored the formation of artistic and cultural groups willing to take part in the consolidation of revolutionary ideals which, until that point, had made little progress. Among these organizations was the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the Workshop of Popular Graphics. → more

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bauhaus imaginista — and the importance of transculturality

What bauhaus imaginista has documented thus relates to a particular historical phase, one that opened a path to the renewal of the art situation in Morocco. And yet, although more recent generations of Moroccan art historians and critics often mentioned the period as a formative and unavoidable reference point, they never really deepened study of that period. It somehow remained in the shadows of other phases and realities. But cultural memory has its rhythms, and the moment arose when the years of the Casablanca Group called for attention, demanding its artistic accomplishments be better understood. In this regard, the bauhaus imaginista project came at the right moment and has had important repercussions. → more

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Memories

I was sixteen years old when I undertook my first journey into finding a professional vocation, first in Asilah, then in Fez followed by Tétouan. 1952. Tangiers was, to me, an open book, a window on the world. The freedom of seeing, of discovering and of feeling, of weaving the narratives of my dreams. → more

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The Bauhaus and Morocco

In the years when Western nations were committed in new projects of partnership, with what was then called the “Third World”, young artists and students from the Maghreb had grown up in the passionate climate of the struggle for independence, were talented, open to modernity, and eager to connect with twentieth-century international art movements, which were different in production and spirit from colonial ideology and culture. → more

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École des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca (1964–1970) — Fonctions de l’Image et Facteurs Temporels

Utopie culturelle vécue, posture éthique et préfiguration de la modernité artistique et culturelle marocaine, l’École des Beaux-arts de Casablanca est, de 1964 à 1970, le lieu de cristallisations d’aspirations sociales et artistiques portées par un groupe d’artistes et enseignants responsables d’une restructuration des bases pédagogiques. → more

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Les Intégrations: Faraoui and Mazières. 1966–1982 — From the Time of Art to the Time of Life

Les Intégrations exemplified a specific conceptual motif, one that acted not within a single field but rather implied a relationship of interdependence between different media (visual arts and architecture) and techniques (those of graphic arts and architecture). They thus allowed for the emergence of disciplines that were not static in formation but evolving in relation to one another. The intermedial relationship they created between art and architecture raises the question of what lies “between” these disciplines: how do they communicate with each other? What are the elements of language common to this “spirit of the times,” to the particular atmosphere of the late 1960s? → more

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Chabâa’s Concept of the “3 As”

“Architecture is one expression of the fine arts” (Mohamed Chabâa, in: Alam Attarbia, No. 1, p. 36, 2001.)

Mohamed Chabâa’s consciousness of his national heritage and his interest in architecture both emerged at a young age. His concept of the “3 A’s”—art, architecture and the arts and crafts—grew out of his discovery both of the Italian Renaissance and the Bauhaus School during a period of study in Rome in the early 1960s. From then on, bringing together the “3 A’s” would become a central interest, a concept Chabâa would apply in various ways and fiercely defend throughout his long and varied career. → more

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Don’t Breathe Normal: Read Souffles! — On Decolonizing Culture

The need for a synthesis of the arts and, with this, a change of pedagogical principles, was not only present at the beginning of the twentieth century (forces that prompted the Bauhaus’s foundation), but after WWII as well, during the “Short Century” of decolonization. This second modern movement and its relation to modernism and the vernacular, the hand made, and the everyday was vividly expressed through texts and art works published in the Moroccan quarterly magazine Souffles, published beginning in the mid-1960s by a group of writers and artists in Rabat, Casablanca and Paris. → more

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A Bauhaus Domesticated in São Paulo

In March 1950, Pietro Maria Bardi, director of the São Paulo Art Museum (MASP, which opened in 1947), wrote to several American educational institutions requesting their curricula as an aid to developing the first design course in Brazil—the Institute of Contemporary Art (IAC), which was to be run as a part of the museum and would also be the country’s first design school. Despite being brief and objective, his missives did not fail to mention the “spirit of the Bauhaus,” explicitly linking the institute he hoped to found with a pedagogical lineage whose objectives and approach he aimed to share. → more

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In the Footsteps of the Bauhaus — Its Reception and Impact on Brazilian Modernity

Through the strong German-speaking minority and its active work in the creation and mediation of culture in the spirit of modernity, the application of Bauhaus formal language, especially in the first phase of Brazilian modernity, has played a considerable role. It was only with the equation of German culture with National Socialism and the ensuing intolerance of German protagonists that these architectural and cultural activities were severely disrupted. In Brazil during this period, a style of modernism based on the principles of Le Corbusier finally gained acceptance. The impulses of the Bauhaus, however, which were not perceived for many years, were also reinterpreted and further developed within Brazil, although they remained occulted in comparison to the public reception of Corbusier. → more

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Ivan Serpa, Lygia Clark, and the Bauhaus in Brazil

The art school of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro was established in 1952, led by Ivan Serpa, who gave classes for both children and adults—including artists who would go on to form the Grupo Frente (1954–56) and later the neo-concrete movement (1959–61). Writer and critic Mário Pedrosa described the “experimental” character of these classes, but the fact this experimentation was structured through study of color, materials, technique and composition has encouraged art historian Adele Nelson to claim Serpa’s teaching method was substantially based on the Bauhaus preliminary course. → more

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Walking on a Möbius Strip — The Inside/Outside of Art in Brazil

This text investigates how the topological figure of the Möbius strip, famously propagated by Bauhaus proponent Max Bill, was used in Brazil within dissident artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s as a tool for reflection on the subject, alterity and public space. The Möbius strip is revisited in this essay as a conduit for thinking critically about possible subversions of Eurocentric forms, as well as various appropriations of traditional popular culture by modern and contemporary art in Brazil. → more

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The Poetry of Design — A search for multidimensional languages between Brazilian and German modernists

In the 1950s and 1960s, intense debates and exchanges took place between Brazilians and Germans working in the fields of design, art, and their various manifestations—from architecture and painting to music and poetry. These intertwined lines are identifiable in myriad events: journeys, meetings, exchanges of letters, exhibitions, lectures, courses, and publications. Common modes of production emerged out of these different encounters where, more than relations of influence, one can observe how entangled realities led to a questioning of the directionality of the flow between center and periphery. → more

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The Latent Forces of Popular Culture — Lina Bo Bardi’s Museum of Popular Art and the School of Industrial Design and Crafts in Bahia, Brazil

This text deals with the experience of the Museum of Popular Art (MAP) and the School of Industrial Design and Handicraft, designed by the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, in Salvador (capital of the state of Bahia), Brazil. Such a “school-museum” is based on the capture and transformation of latent forces that exist in Brazilian popular culture. → more

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Teko Porã — On Art and Life

Cristine Takuá is an Indigenous philosopher, educator, and artisan who lives in the village of Rio Silveira, state of São Paulo, Brazil. She was invited to present a contemporary perspective on questions and tensions raised by interactions between the Indigenous communities and the mainstream art system, as well as to address Brazil’s specific social and political context. → more

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Times of Rudeness — Design at an Impasse

In 1980, Lina Bo Bardi began working on a book concerning her time in the northeastern part of Brazil. With the help of Isa Grinspum Ferraz, she captioned the illustrations, revised her contributions to the book and drafted the layout and contents. The latter also included texts by her collaborators who, in a truly collective effort, had tried to envision the project of a true Brazil—an unfettered and free country with no remnant remaining of the colonial inferiority complex which had plagued the country earlier in its history. Bo Bardi discontinued her work in 1981. In 1994, the Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi published this project as Times of Rudeness: Design at an Impasse. → more

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Connecting the Dots — Sharing the Space between Indigenous and Modernist Visual Spatial Languages

Ever increasing numbers of design institutes note the merits of cultural diversity within their pedagogy and practice. Rather quixotically, however, Eurocentric modernist ideals remain dominant within design curricula. This ambiguity results in non-Western social, cultural and creative practice, remaining side-lined, albeit while still being lauded as of great value. Critical of this duplicity, this paper introduces three Indigenous visual spatial languages, identifying a number of correlations and contradictions these offer to the establishment and implementation of Bauhaus pedagogy and subsequent examples of modernism adopted beyond Europe. → more

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