Moving Away at the Kiran Nadar Museum, which was presented before in Hangzhou (China) with the same title, brings diverse Bauhaus genealogies together in an exhibition. Through a series of case studies it becomes possible to compare different responses to the Bauhaus, filtered through cultural translation and grounded in the conditions of a particular locality. The exhibition bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away is realized in collaboration with the China Design Museum / China Academy of Art (Hangzhou).
Marcel Breuer’s filmstrip collage ein bauhaus-film. fünf jahre lang (a bauhaus film, five years long, 1926) provides the exhibition’s point of departure. It visualizes the development of the chair from crafted object to industrial prototype, towards a future where designed objects become obsolete. Breuer wrote that design must adapt to changing environments, which could be read as an argument against a universal set of forms and methods. Breuer’s collage was published in the Bauhaus Journal No 1, and the magazine’s contents introduce the basic principle of Bauhaus design, which go beyond individual objects to think about the building as a whole. This meant the development of new designs for cups, chairs, textiles, wall colours and flooring, through to campus architecture, houses and housing estates. The exhibition explores how these disciplines were integrated and related to the idea of social function and reform.
Following his politically motivated dismissal in 1930, the Bauhaus’s second director Hannes Meyer and seven of his students travelled to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet government and worked there on projects, including designing educational facilities, interiors and housing schemes.