BAUHAUS 1 1928
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR BAU UND GESTALTUNG
Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy [Editors],
Herbert Bayer [Designer]
Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy [Editors], Herbert Bayer [Designer]: BAUHAUS 1 1928: ZEITSCHRIFT FUR BAU UND GESTALTUNG. Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau, 1928. Text in German. Slim quarto. Thick printed stapled wrappers. 20 pp. Text and illustrations. Cover photograph and interior design by Herbert Bayer. Wrappers edgeworn, lightly soiled and creased with a small chip to upper corner. A good or better copy. Rare.
8.25 x 11.75 saddle-stitched edition with 20 pages illustrated with photographs and illustrations. This cover presents one of the iconic images of twentieth-century graphic design in Herbert Bayer's magnificent typofoto illustration.
The "Quarterly Magazine for Design" served as house organ of the Bauhaus Dessau and provided an extraordinary snapshot of the productivity of the Bauhaus Dessau from its high point under the directorship of Walter Gropius to its sliding decline under Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This is the last issue produced under the leadership of Gropius and Moholy-Nagy, and reflects the absolute zenith of the publication in terms of editorial content and graphic design.
Published periodically from 1926 to 1931, the most important voices of the European Avant-Garde are recognized in word and image: Bauhaus masters Josef Albers, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gerrit Rietveld, and many more. They address the developments in and around the Bauhaus, the methods and focal points of their own teaching, and current projects of students and masters. At the time primarily addressed to the members of the “circle of friends of the bauhaus,” the journal published by Gropius and Moholy-Nagy makes tangible the authentic voice of this mouthpiece of the avant-garde.
Includes "Fotografie ist Lictgestaltung" by Moholy-Nagy with photograms and photoplastiks by Moholy and images by Ulrich Klavun, Consemuller, Albert Braun and Lotte Beese, and Bayer-Hecht. Also included is "Typografie und websachengestaltung" by Herbert Bayer, and two pages devoted to a small housing development by Marcel Breuer. The last two pages are vintage advertisements for Marcel Breuer's tubular steel furniture for Standard-Mobel and others.
Fourteen issues of the Bauhaus magazine were produced between 1926 to 1931, and this cover -- featuring Bayer's photo compostion of the Foundation Theory -- is an instantly recognizable icon from the Dessau years. All fourteen issues were assembled with excellent examples of the functional graphic design and new typography, as practiced by the European Avant-Garde in the late 1920s all the way up to the point where the lights went out all over Europe.
Of all the artists to pass through the Bauhaus, none lived the Bauhaus ideal of total integration of the arts into life like Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985). He was a graphic designer, typographer, photographer, painter, environmental designer, sculptor and exhibition designer. He entered the Bauhaus in 1921 and was greatly influenced by Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. He left in 1923, but returned in 1925 to become a master in the school. During his tenure as a Bauhaus master he produced many designs that became standards of a Bauhaus "style." Bayer was instrumental in moving the Bauhaus to purely sans serif usage in all its work. In 1928 he left the Bauhaus to work in Berlin. He primarily worked as a designer and art director for the Dorland Agency, an international firm. During his years at Dorland a Bayer style was established. Bayer emigrated to the United States in 1938 and set up practice in New York. His US design included work for NW Ayers, consultant art director for J. Walter Thompson and design work for GE. [bayer_2019]