In collaboration with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the Goethe-Institut Hong Kong, the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong and the HKU Museum Society, Picturing the Bauhaus celebrates 100 years of the famed design school’s influence through the photographic eye of Bauhaus student and instructor Erich Consemüller.

Erich Consemüller (1902–1957) trained as a carpenter before moving to Weimar to enrol in the Bauhaus School, where he studied from 1922–1927. Apart from time spent in the workshop in Dessau, Consemüller was commisioned to photo-document the building, and to capture images of his fellow students and their design work.

This UMAG exhibition of Erich Consemüller’s photographs highlights the school building’s interior features and artistic works created by Bauhaus artists, including Consemüller’s own design for a tea table and his collaborations with Marcel Breuer on Thost House in Hamburg.

At the core of Bauhaus training was the ‘bau’ (building), within which students would spend their first year experimenting with colour, form and materials before choosing specialisations. One example of this cross-discplinary expertise can be seen in the designs of Marianne Brandt, who established herself as a master in metal, wood and various forms of lighting.

Works shown here highlight a range of novel techniques developed from students and teachers, such as textile innovations like Eisengarn and Marcel Breuer’s furniture forms structured on bent tubular steel. These new materials and technologies merged into a utilitarian grace which established the Bauhaus as arguably the most significant modernist art movement of the 20th century.

Please click here for exhibition handout.

The exhibition coincides with the symposium 100 Years Bauhaus – Designing the Future on 11-12 April 2019. For more details please click here.

Please click here for more images (Video produced by Learning Environment Services, ITS.)

Education worksheet (English version only) is available upon request, please fill out the request form here.