Download Original Bauhaus Books & Journals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy & More

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In 1919, Ger­man archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius found­ed Bauhaus, the most influ­en­tial art school of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Bauhaus defined mod­ernist design and rad­i­cal­ly changed our rela­tion­ship with every­day objects. Gropius wrote in his man­i­festo Pro­gramm des Staatlichen Bauhaus­es Weimar that “There is no essen­tial dif­fer­ence between the artist and the arti­san.” His new school, which fea­tured fac­ul­ty that includ­ed the likes of Paul Klee, Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, did indeed erase the cen­turies-old line between applied arts and fine arts.

Bauhaus archi­tec­ture sand­blast­ed away the ornate flour­ish­es com­mon with ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry build­ings, favor­ing instead the clean, sleek lines of indus­tri­al fac­to­ries. Design­er Mar­cel Breuer reimag­ined the com­mon chair by strip­ping it down to its most ele­men­tal form. Her­bert Bay­er rein­vent­ed and mod­ern­ized graph­ic design by focus­ing on visu­al clar­i­ty. Gun­ta Stöl­zl, Mar­i­anne Brandt and Chris­t­ian Dell rad­i­cal­ly remade such diverse objects as fab­rics and tea ket­tles.

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Nowa­days, of course, get­ting one of those Bauhaus tea ket­tles, or even an orig­i­nal copy of Gropius’s man­i­festo, would cost a small for­tune. For­tu­nate­ly for design nerds, typog­ra­phy mavens and archi­tec­ture enthu­si­asts every­where, the good folks over at Mono­skop have post­ed online a whole set of beau­ti­ful­ly designed pub­li­ca­tions from the sto­ried school.

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Click here to pick out indi­vid­ual works or here to just get all of them. Sad­ly, though, you can’t down­load a teaket­tle.

The list of Books in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive includes:

And here are some key Bauhaus jour­nals:

  1. bauhaus 1 (1926). 5 pages, 42 cm. Down­load (23 MB).
  2. bauhaus: zeitschrift für bau und gestal­tung 2:1 (Feb 1928). Down­load (17 MB).
  3. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:1 (Jan 1929). Down­load (17 MB).
  4. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:2 (Apr-Jun 1929). Down­load (15 MB).
  5. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:3 (Jul-Sep 1929). Down­load (16 MB).
  6. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 2 (Jul 1931). Down­load (15 MB).

Get more in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Home­made Hand Pup­pets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Cre­ate an Abstract Com­po­si­tion

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.


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