Bauhaus Graphic Novel

The main character of this extraordinary graphic novel is not a person but an idea—the school of Bauhaus, which arose in the wake of World War I, and emerged as the fundamental reference point for virtually every avant-garde artistic movement that followed. Visually arresting illustrations and engaging texts place the novel’s protagonist squarely in the middle of the twentieth-century debate on the relationship between technology and culture. The novel is divided into three chapters that trace the evolution of the Bauhaus, as its center moved across Germany—from Weimar to Dessau to Berlin—and as its philosophy responded to this economically, politically and intellectually highly charged era in Europe. Sergio Varbella’s inventive drawings bring to life the theories of founder Walter Gropius, as well as the basic design ideals of unity and equity. Valentina Grande’s thoughtful texts highlight crucial moments within the movement’s history and in the lives of principal figures such as Klee, Kandinsky, Albers, and Mies van der Rohe. The perfect introduction to a radical but highly influential chapter in the history of design, this novel shows how the Bauhaus school broke down barriers and built up ideals that are still applied today.

Forty five key women of the Bauhaus movement. Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective reclaims the other half of Bauhaus history, yielding a new understanding of the radical experiments in art and life undertaken at the Bauhaus and the innovations that continue to resonate with viewers around the world today. The story of the Bauhaus has usually been kept narrow, localized to its original time and place and associated with only a few famous men such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and László Moholy-Nagy. Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective bursts the bounds of this slim history by revealing fresh Bauhaus faces: Forty-five Bauhaus women unjustifiably forgotten by most history books. This book also widens the lens to reveal how the Bauhaus drew women from many parts of Europe and beyond, and how, through these cosmopolitan female designers, artists, and architects, it sent the Bauhaus message out into the world and to a global audience.

Art historian Éva Forgács's book is an unusual take on the Bauhaus. She examines the school as shaped by the great forces of history as well as the personal dynamism of its faculty and students. The book focuses on the idea of the Bauhaus - the notion that the artist should be involved in the technological innovations of mechanization and mass production - rather than on its artefacts. Founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius and closed down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus had to struggle through the years of Weimar Germany not only with its political foes but also with the often-diverging personal ambitions and concepts within its own ranks. It is the inner conflicts and their solutions, the continuous modification of the original Bauhaus idea by politics within and without, that make the history of the school and Forgács's account of it dramatic.

Superficially resembling 1960s teenage humor comics, Tim Hensley's graphic novelWally Gropius is actually an acute satire of power, celebrityhood, and modern culture that tells the story of the titular character, who bears a closer resemblance to a teenaged Richie Rich or a classmate of Archie Andrews at Riverdale High than he does the famous Bauhaus architect whose name he shares.

A rich, wide-ranging meditation on the iPhone as direct descendant of the 1930s Bauhaus, one of the twentieth century's most influential schools of art and design (summed up in Mies van der Rohe's dictum, "less is more") whose principle aim was to connect art and industry. From one of the leading authorities on the Bauhaus and modernism. Nicholas Fox Weber, in this deft, entertaining, and brilliant rumination on art and technology, writes of the iPhone as the essence of the Bauhaus principles of form following function--of honesty of design and materials that reflect the true nature of objects and buildings, favoring linear and geometrical forms; adhering to line, shape, and colors; synthesizing art to modern times; the fusion in design of art and technology. Weber, an authority and celebrant of twentieth-century modernism, ranging from the paintings of Balthus to the architecture of Le Corbusier, was a close associate of Anni and Josef Albers, the last living giants of the Bauhaus, and absorbed firsthand its truest beliefs. The Alberses emphasized their passion for "good design over bad art." Anni, a groundbreaking textile artist and printmaker, and Josef, a painter and color theorist and influential art teacher, stuck to "what was taught at the Bauhaus: the right use of materials, good technique, a purpose that serves all." Weber writes that the Bauhaus was not a style but an attitude: clear design and visual acuity as the embodiment of morality and honesty. And in iBauhaus, Weber explores how the iPhone, with its effective design and its versatility, honors these deepest beliefs, as well as the values that the Bauhaus sought to give to the world.

For the first time, the history of typography is told in comic strip form Typography confronts us everywhere: in books and newspapers, on road signs, in product packaging, and on political leaflets. It is ubiquitous to the point of mundanity. But while the typeface might be secondary to the message, it remains crucial to the way we respond. Fonts spark emotions; they evoke eras and ideologies. Some, like Edward Johnson's for the London Underground, have become iconic. Others, like Comic Sans, are loathed. Each one has its own place in history. The ABC of Typography traces 3,500 years of type from Sumerian pictographs through Roman calligraphy to Gutenberg, the Bauhaus, and beyond. Brimming with insight and anecdote, this witty and well-informed graphic guide explores the historical, technological, and cultural shifts that have defined the look of the words we read.

An analytical and practical adaptation of the Bauhaus books showing amazing possibilities for graphic designers today.

In the mid-1930s, three giants of the international Modern movement, Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, fled Nazi Germany and sought refuge in Hampstead in the most exciting new apartment block in Britain. The Lawn Road Flats, or Isokon building, was commissioned by the young visionary couple Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by aspiring architect Wells Coates. Built in 1934 in response to the question ‘How do we want to live now?’ it was England’s first modernist apartment building and was hugely influential in pioneering the concept of minimal living. During the mid-1930s and 1940s its flats, bar and dining club became an extraordinary creative nexus for international artists, writers and thinkers. Jack Pritchard employed Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy in his newly formed Isokon design company and the furniture, architecture and graphic art the three produced in pre-war England helped shape Modern Britain. This book tells the story of the Isokon, from its beginnings to the present day, and fully examines the work, artistic networks and legacy of the Bauhaus artists during their time in Britain. The tales are not just of design and architecture but war, sex, death, espionage and infamous dinner parties. Isokon resident Agatha Christie features in the book, as does Charlotte Perriand who Jack Pritchard commissioned for a pavilion design in 1930. The book is beautifully illustrated with largely unseen archive photography, and includes the work of photographer and Soviet spy Edith Tudor-Hart, as well as plans and sketches, menus, postcards and letters from the Pritchard family archive. In Spring 2018, the Isokon building and Breuer, Gropius and Moholy-Nagy were honoured with a Blue Plaque from English Heritage.