The influential Bauhaus school (1919-33) in Germany offered an ambitious variety of art and design courses, from architecture and cabinetmaking to typography and painting. But when the school marked its centenary a few years ago and a rediscovery of the women of the Bauhaus ensued, that attention was narrow in scope. “A persistent myth suggests that all women were confined to weaving,” says Kristin Bartels, the curator and head of collection for visual arts and photography at Berlin’s Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung.
A persistent myth suggests that all Bauhaus women were confined to weaving
Women who wove at the Bauhaus, such as Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl, have been widely championed. However, “this oversimplifies the reality”, Bartels says. “Many women worked across departments, studying architecture or—crucially—photography.” Bartels is hoping to help correct this oversight in an exhibition at Berlin’s Museum für Fotografie of around 300 photographs drawn from the collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung.
The group exhibition New Woman, New Vision: Women Photographers of the Bauhaus includes the work of 29 photographers—mostly affiliated with the original Bauhaus in Germany, and a few with the New Bauhaus that opened in Chicago after the original school was closed down in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi Party. Photography had always played a major role at the school, both as a means of documenting designs and as a standalone artistic medium, long before formal photography instruction began in 1929.
Lucia Moholy, for example, was actively photographing Bauhaus objects, architecture, and people as of 1923. Her photographs have been overshadowed by (and sometimes attributed to) her husband, the Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy. Some of her works in the exhibition will include portraits of the women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin and the Bauhaus student Eva Weininger, as well as a snapshot of the school’s Dessau campus, designed by the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. The photographs of Ise Gropius, who was nicknamed “Mrs. Bauhaus”, were similarly overlooked in favour of her husband (her work is also included in the exhibition).
Other participating photographers include those who continued working in the medium after their time at the Bauhaus, such as Ellen Auerbach, Elsa Thiemann, Gertrud Arndt and Florence Henri. Some engaged with photography but are better known for their work in other fields, such as the painter and sculptor Marianne Brandt, and the textile designer Margarete Dambeck-Keller. New Woman, New Vision will also include photographs by three contemporary artists—Kalinka Gieseler, Caroline Kynast and Sinta Werner—who were invited to create works in dialogue with the historic photographs.
The Bauhaus-Archiv is home to the world’s largest collection dedicated to the Bauhaus and has extensive photography holdings. Bartels says that this enabled the curatorial team to unearth many outstanding works that had previously gone unnoticed. “Many Bauhaus artists entrusted us with their entire life’s work, even when they had yet to gain recognition in the art market,” Bartels says. “This gives us a unique opportunity: to research and introduce these forgotten Bauhaus figures—especially the women—to the public, finally granting them the visibility they deserve.”
• New Woman, New Vision: Women Photographers of the Bauhaus, Museum für Fotografie, Berlin, 17 April-4 October
