Bauhaus – a revolutionary art school (found in Weimar in 1919) was far more than just an

educational center. Coinciding with a series of other significant movements and events, the Bauhaus
was a channel to keep it all together in one place, at least for a certain period of time. So even
though the school was closed a few years before the World War II began, the spirit was kept alive,
albeit dispersed across the globe, and it has helped redefine the relationship between arts and
crafts, in a way even more outreaching than the one suggested by the original Arts and Crafts in the
late 19th century.
The Bauhaus came in a moment of great uncertainty, at a time when the intellectual started
drifting apart from the manufactured. This state was announced by the emergence of
industrialization on one hand, but it was also provoked by the nihilist and anti-art ideas suggested
by Dada on the other.
The founder, Walter Gropius, and a number of his contemporaries were set out to reconcile
creativity and realization, to bring theory back to practice, and vice versa. They believed in the unity
of all arts, which should be in a constant dialogue, helping and learning from each other, and
responding to the true needs of the society. With this in mind, the Bauhaus encompassed a range of
different genres, but all of them were brought together through crafts.
Almost all the artists who were associated with the Bauhaus became known as the legends of the
20th-century art, such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, etc., which speaks clearly
about the impact of the movement. This impact is also reflected in a number of iconic designs left
behind.
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There is no doubt that the 20th century artwas all about changing perspective. The artist’s way
of seeing and therefore understanding things has been changing and continues to do so even in
this day and age. The new, experimental approach to perspective was pursued both directly and
implicitly.
Painters and sculptors had abandoned linear perspective and began discovering other ways of
representing reality, but furthermore, the very vantage point from which to observe and
comprehend art in general was changed as well. It was art’s way of breaking with
tradition and embracing a different approach to its disciplinarity, on the one hand, and reality on
the other.
The first new style that emerged in the 20th century was the rebellious, anti-rational,
colorful Fauvism. Three of its most notable protagonists (Henri Matisse, Andre
Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck)
The intense artistic experimentation that took place duing the period 1905 to 1916 gave rise
to several trends and movements: the Expressionism, Fauvism, Die Brucke, Der Blaue
Reiter, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Vorticism,
and Dadaism. These groups investigated new ideas of pictorial language -particularly the
use of abstraction - and explored the expressive possibilities of materials and techniques not
previously used in art. Part of their motivation was to urge people to abandon their
conventional way of seeing things and adopt a fresh look at the ever-changing world. The
messages voiced by these groups sometimes baffled society, broadening the gap between
traditional culture and avant-garde art. This prompted them to define themselves with clear
values and objectives, which were often broadcast using posters and pamphlets. As a unit,
the groups could identify and develop alternative ways of exhibiting their art, such as
private galleries, cabarets, theatres, and political organs.

The roots of the German Expressionist school lay in the works of Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and
James Ensor, each of whom in the period 1885–1900 evolved a highly personal painting style. These artists
used the expressive possibilities of colour and line to explore dramatic and emotion-laden themes, to convey
the qualities of fear, horror, and the grotesque, or simply to celebrate nature with hallucinatory intensity.
They broke away from the literal representation of nature in order to express more subjective outlooks or
states of mind.

The second and principal wave of Expressionism began about 1905, when a group of German artists led by
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner formed a loose association called Die Brucke. The group included Erich Heckel, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl. These painters were in revolt against what they saw as the superficial
naturalism of academic Impressionism. They wanted to rein fuse German art with a spiritual vigour they felt
it lacked, and they sought to do this through an elemental, primitive, highly personal and spontaneous
expression.

Die Brücke's original members were soon joined by the Germans Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and Otto
Müller. The Expressionists were influenced by their predecessors of the 1890s and were also interested in
African wood carvings and the works of such Northern European medieval and Renaissance artists as
Albrecht Durer, Matthias Grunewald, and Albrecht Altdorfer. They were also aware of Neo-
Impressionism, Fauvism, and other recent movements.

The works of Die Brücke artists stimulated Expressionism in other parts of Europe. Oskar Kokoschka and
Egon Schiele of Austria adopted their tortured brushwork and angular lines, and Georges Rouault and Chaim
Soutine in France each developed painting styles marked by intense emotional expression and the violent
distortion of figural subject matter. The painter Max Beckmann, the graphic artist Käthe Kollwitz, and the
sculptors Ernst Barlach and Wilhelm Lehmbruck, all of Germany, also worked in Expressionist modes. The
artists belonging to the group known as Der Blaue Reiter are sometimes regarded as Expressionists,
although their art is generally lyrical and abstract, less overtly emotional, more harmonious, and more
concerned with formal and pictorial problems than that of Die Brücke artists.
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Der Blaue Reiter translates in English as The Blue Rider. A number of avant-garde artists
living in Munich had founded the Neue Kunstler Vereiningung, or New Artist Association
(N.K.V.). The most important of these were the Russian born Wassily Kandinsky and the
German, Franz Marc. In 1911 Kandinsky and Marc broke with the rest of the N.K.V. and in
December that year held in Munich the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter. This was an
informal association rather than a coherent group like Brücke. Other artists closely involved
were Paul Klee and August Macke.