The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop

Because expressionism became so abstract in the forms it set forth in all media, and because it claimed to be expressing the artist's particular ideas and emotions, the art which was produced required explication. So the artist or art critic used more and more words to explain less and less representative forms.

These efforts were necessary in order to convince the public (the buyers) that these forms were not mere decorative squiggles in fabric, on pots or on canvas. Early on, Kandinsky, the painter who had attracted so many promising students to the Bauhaus weaving workshops, began to separate himself from the direction of the Bauhaus toward "Art and Technology -- A New Unity," which had become the slogan of the institution by 1923.

It was Johannes Itten who was most influential in the post-WWI phase of the Bauhaus, particularly on the leader of the weaving workshop, Gunta Stolzl. She was influenced by his beliefs in Eastern thought and religion: that the artist's self could be discovered through ascetic practices and that this "self" could then be expressed in art. Color became the dominant means of expression, and textiles became the equal of the canvas in providing a medium to carry the artist's expression in fields of color.

Within the decade of the 20s, the Bauhaus moved more and more into architecture, and into industrial design of furniture and textiles. The clean, angular lines of the buildings and furniture and the color fields of the textiles led to the minimalist style of decorations which are popular in the late twentieth century.

Highly Recommended Reading: Bauhaus Textiles, Sigrid Wortmann Weltge. Thames and Hudson, 1993

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