The Kunstmuseum Bern is devoting a solo exhibition to Johannes Itten, the founder of the Bauhaus prep course, in showcasing his utopian project of merging art and life in a holistic way. The interplay between key works from his painting oeuvre and his recently researched sketch books throws new light on Itten’s hitherto little understood mode of seeking to understand the world about him through drawing.
Together with bauhaus imaginista, the Zentrum Paul Klee is presenting the novel interpretation of the Bauhaus as a vibrant, globally shaped phenomenon and cosmopolitical project. The exhibition is the result of a two-year research project und consolidates the findings and outcomes of the 2018 exhibitions, symposia and workshops that took place in Rabat, Hangzhou, New York, Kyoto und Tokyo, Moscow, Saõ Paulo, Lagos as well as in New Delhi. The synthesis of these events and their findings was shown for the first time at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
As an avant-garde school of art, architecture and design, the Bauhaus and likewise the former Bauhaus masters Johannes Itten and Paul Klee were embedded in an international network of intellectuals and artists, European and non-European organizations, collectives and institutions.
Against this backdrop, the Zentrum Paul Klee is organizing a symposium that seeks to present new methodical issues for rethinking to art history. Transnational and transcultural exchange processes have made it necessary that the paradigm of sovereign modern nations be questioned – and consequently also the fundamental principles of classical art history. New concepts of interpretation, interconnection, transformation, artistic and cultural mobility open up our eyes to new imaginative horizons, which span the many corresponding modern movements in which the Bauhaus and the diverse reception thereof played an active part.
Organized by: Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Zentrum Paul Klee; Marion von Osten, bauhaus imaginista; Christoph Wagner, Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte, Universität
