Gunta Stölzl > Works > Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1925

Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1925 Galleries

Wall Hangings and Carpets : Gunta Stölzl - excerpt from "The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop", 1931, discussing the Weimar years. "Weaving is an old craft which has evolved principles upon which even the mechnical loom must still build today. A high degree of handcraft, dexterity, skill and understanding must be acquired, and these are not, as in the case of tapestry, to be nourished by imaginative power or artistic feeling. The coming of grips with the flat loom, as its natural result, the limitation of materials, the restriction of colour, the tying of the form to the weaving process. The use of a material on the other hand, limits and determines the choice of the elements. Conclusions about function are always dependent on the conception of life and the living. In 1922-23 we had an idea of living fundamentally different from that today. Our ideas could then still be poems fraught with ideas, flowery decoration, personal experience! They also quickly met with approval outside the walls of the Bauhaus with the public at large. They were the most easily understood and, thanks to their subject matter, the most ingratiating of those wildly revolutionary Bauhaus creations…"

Wall Hangings and Carpets

Chairs with Marcel Breuer : A work from the early years of the Bauhaus, presumed lost for the past 80 years, has been recovered in 2004: the 'African Chair', created by Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl. Made of painted wood with a colorful textile weave, this chair embodies the spirit of the early Bauhaus like no other object. The seat and back of the chair employ a woven textile. Gunta Stölzl in a letter to H.M. Wingler, 07.01.1964: "That was the first time we worked together. I produced the fabric. I threaded and tautened the warp directly through the holes in the frame and wove the texture onto the chair itself... the forms were freely invented and without repetitions..." African Chair on Bauhaus Online In the seat and back of the second chair, Stölzl employed the taut strips of woven upholstery which were to characterize so much of Breuer’s later work and which he developed together with Gunta Stölzl and her weaving workshop. The chair on Bauhaus Online

Chairs with Marcel Breuer

Free Artistic Work : Gunta Stölzl's Diary Entry, 1919-1920: "...His [Itten's] first words were about rhythm. One must first educate one’'s hand, first make the fingers supple. We do finger exercises just like a pianist does. In these beginnings we already sense through what it is that rhythm occurs; an endless circular movement begun with the fingertips, the movement floods through the wrist, elbow and shoulder to the heart; one must feel this with every mark, every line; no more drawing that is not experienced, no half-understood rhythm. Drawing is not the reproduction of what is seen, but making whatever one senses through external stimulus (naturally internal, too) flow through one'’s entire body; then it re-emerges as something entirely personal, as some kind of artistic creation, more simple, as pulsating life…"

Free Artistic Work

Designs for Carpets and Wall Hangings : Anni Albers recalled those early days: "There was no real teacher in textiles. We had no formal classes. Now people say to me: 'You learned it all at the Bauhaus'! We did not learn a thing in the beginning. I learned from Gunta, who was a great teacher. We sat down and tried to do it. Sometimes we sat together and tried to solve problems of construction."

Designs for Carpets and Wall Hangings

Weimar Fabrics : Gunta Stölzl - excerpt from “The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop”, 1931, discussing the Weimar years – the evolution and changes in textiles’ design. "Gradually a change took place. We began to sense how pretentious these independent, unique pieces were: – tablecloths, curtains, wall coverings. The richness of colour and form became too licentious for us; it did not adapt itself, it did not subordinate itself to living. We tried to become more simple, to discipline our means, to use these in a more straightforward and functional way. Thus we came to yard goods which could directly serve the room, the living problem. The watchword of the new epoch was ‘models for industry’."

Weimar Fabrics

Black and White Drawings :

Black and White Drawings

Weimar Photos :

Weimar Photos

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