FRAULEIN GROOVY A long-overdue book shines a light on the brilliant young women who studied at the legendary Bauhaus
A centennial celebration of the Bauhaus women
With its clean lines and imposing concrete façade, the Bauhaus in Dessau looks from the outside like an austere emblem of masculinity. Step inside, however, and the more human aspects of Walter Gropius’ pioneering Modernist movement emerge: almost every surface is painted in a different colour and the ground floor features a huge performance space where students were encouraged to take part in experimental dance and theatre productions.
Just as the playfulness of the Bauhaus is often lost from commentary, so the vital contribution that women made to its development has often been neglected. In principle, there was no barrier to entry when the school opened in the German city of Weimar in 1919 (it subsequently moved to Dessau). In practice, however, female students were offered a restricted choice of subjects, with a dedicated textile group opening in 1920 to keep them out of other more prestigious workshops. Yet this did not prevent women from flourishing creatively. ‘We searched… through the swirling chaos of artistic values, full of enthusiasm for our activities, full of hope for our independent path,’ wrote Gunta Stölzl, the founder and head of the class, in 1931.
Stölzl, now rightly renowned for the way she combined technical mastery with artistic flair in her textiles, is one of hundreds of women profiled in a new book highlighting the achievements of the ‘Bauhaus Gals’ (the term, which comes from the German word Bauhausmädel, feels archaic now but at the time was embraced by female students as indicative of their aspirational outlook). Among the other heroines to appear on its pages are Anni Albers, lately the subject of a retrospective at Tate Modern; Margaretha Reichardt, remembered for her brightly painted wooden toys; and Lucia Moholy, who has only recently received credit for her photographs documenting the Bauhaus after decades during which they were wrongly attributed to her husband. In some cases, the legacy of these women survives in the form of designs still manufactured today, notably the metalworker Marianne Brandt’s striking geometricstyle tea sets, put back into production by Alessi after her death in 1983. ‘If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality,’ Gropius once told his students. A century after the foundation of the Bauhaus, its female cohort is finally proving him right. ‘Bauhaus Gals’ by Patrick Rössler (£30, Taschen) is published on 15 March.