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" An artist possesses the ability to give a soul to the inanimate product created by the machine. The work of the artist must become a fundamental part of design in modern industry”.
Based on this statement, Walter Gropius founded the School that became one of the most revolutionary in the history of art, design and architecture: the Staatliches Bauhaus, better known by the single name Bauhaus.
The term literally means "building house" and originally referred to the school of design, the result of the merger of the former Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. However, from the very beginning, the Bauhaus was not just a current that limited itself to architecture, but rather a "cauldron" where crafts and fine arts influenced each other, ideas from Neoplasticism (or De Stijl) with English Arts and Crafts and Constructivism. Among the lecturers and teachers who passed through the doors of the Weimar headquarters first and Dessau later were Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marlene Brandt, Otto Berger, Friedrich Engemann, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Adolf Meyer and others.
In a Germany committed to recovery in the early post-war period, Gropius in his 1925 manifesto speaks of the Bauhaus workshops and the development of new design models thanks to a new way of collaboration with industry, which became a place to examine products and create prototypes designed with an industrial vision, born to be mass-produced. Gropius continues to speak of the figure of the craftsman, defining him as the craftsman of the future: no longer only competent in the artistic aspect, but fully aware of the technical and design component that must be intrinsic in the original conception of any work.
With his manifesto he establishes a real vademecum comprising a total of eleven fundamental points to be observed by all those who express a willingness to be part of his workshops. He declares that there should be no boundary between artist and craftsman: "architects, sculptors, painters, we must all turn to craftsmanship!" He defines the artist as an "exalted craftsman". Competence in execution is essential for every artist; this is where the source of creative imagination lies. One of the identifying characteristics of the Bauhaus remains the statement: shape follows function. The simple but elegant geometric shapes of the Bauhaus are designed according to the intended function or purpose of the building or object, preferably using linear and geometric forms and using materials that reflect the true nature of the final product. Designers always have to ask themselves the question of the intelligent use of resources: controlling costs, minimising lead times, reducing waste materials and unused space in order to develop prototypes and products for mass production in a simple and effective way, ensuring constant evolution. The Bauhaus School does not allow anything that is not progress-oriented.
Maybe not everyone knows that... the fundamental concept of IKEA modular design did not start in Sweden, the company's place of origin, but was inspired by the philosophies and designs of the Bauhaus designers.
Walter Gropius would have never imagined that just over 50 years later, in England, Peter Murphy would use the name of his beloved workshops to create one of the British bands that revolutionised the history of gothic and post-punk music.
Dark, dissonant tones, often bordering on the eerie, perfectly blend sounds from the most diverse genres from dub music to glam rock, from psychedelia to funk. This is highly similar to the Gropius School, in which all arts and techniques merged to the point of losing their respective boundaries.
The moment of greatest interchange between the German-born movement and the British band was the collaboration between David Jay (the band's bass player) and the painter Rene Halkett to record a single in honor of that fertile and unforgettable season.
