The Untold Story of Bauhaus Women: The Avant-Garde Artists Who Helped Shape Modernism

It does­n’t take too long a look at the almost sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly clean-lined build­ings of Wal­ter Gropius to get the impres­sion that the man want­ed to ush­er in a new world, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that many of them went up before World War II. Take the Bauhaus Dessau build­ing, which, though com­plet­ed exact­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, looks like a con­crete trans­mis­sion from the future that nev­er arrived, or one that may indeed still be on the way. It once housed the Ger­man art school turned polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al engine he found­ed in 1919, whose prin­ci­ples includ­ed absolute equal­i­ty between male and female par­tic­i­pants — or they did at first, at any rate.

Soon decid­ing that the new insti­tu­tion would­n’t be tak­en seri­ous­ly with too high a pro­por­tion of women, Gropius lim­it­ed their enroll­ment to one-third of the stu­dent body. That episode, among oth­ers that under­score the ways in which Gropius and the Bauhaus’ osten­si­ble com­mit­ment to the advance­ment of women was­n’t all it could be, fig­ures into Susanne Radel­hof’s doc­u­men­tary The Untold Sto­ry of Bauhaus Women.

Yet what­ev­er the short­com­ings in that depart­ment one might iden­ti­fy from a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry van­tage, the fact remains that the Bauhaus made pos­si­ble — or at least encour­aged — more endur­ing and influ­en­tial work by female artists and design­ers than almost any art school in ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Europe.

Among the almost 500 women who stud­ied at the Bauhaus, the film pro­files fig­ures like Alma Busch­er, “who cre­at­ed pro­to­types of avant-garde fur­ni­ture and toys”; “vision­ary met­al­smith and design­er” Mar­i­anne Brandt; Gun­ta Stöl­zl, whose “weav­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ized mod­ern tex­tile design” (weav­ing even­tu­al­ly being the main pro­gram to which women were admit­ted); Friedl Dick­er, a “mul­ti­tal­ent­ed artist” ded­i­cat­ed to the Bauhaus; and Lucia Moholy, whose “excep­tion­al pho­tographs still influ­ence how we view Bauhaus design today.” The school itself may have shut down in 1933, owing to the con­flict between its aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal ends and those of the ris­ing Nazi Par­ty, but the for­ward-look­ing nature and world­wide cul­tur­al influ­ence of the Bauhaus have ensured that we still feel the influ­ence of its alum­ni, male and female alike.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The Women of the Bauhaus: See Hip, Avant-Garde Pho­tographs of Female Stu­dents & Instruc­tors at the Famous Art School

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

The Bauhaus Book­shelf: Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books, Jour­nals, Man­i­festos & Ads That Still Inspire Design­ers World­wide

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.