01

Vkhutemas students of Favorsky’s class, 1920s

wo schools dictated the direction of design education in the 20th century: Germany’s Bauhaus and the Soviet Union’s Vkhutemas, the Russian acronym for the Moscow-based Higher Art and Technical Studios. While reference to the Bauhaus is immediately understood anywhere in the world, mention of Vkhutemas often goes unrecognized, even in Russia.

02

Advertising workshop, Bauhaus Dessau, 1926

© Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung

War and revolution in the early 20th century forced thinking people to recalibrate their ideas about life and how best to proceed. One approach to this daunting task was to envision a new type of person, fostered by an improved human environment. These two schools, the German and the Soviet, were experiments in training new kinds of specialists needed to create a new world. Without ignoring differences between the schools, we hope here to convey, by means of comparative chronologies, the parallel essence of these institutions and the nature of their programs.