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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.
Vladimir Tatlin, costume design for Life for the Tsar, 1913–15
© A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum
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Portrait of Walter Gropius, c. 1928
Photo by E. Bieber
© Bauhaus Archive
04
Bauhaus manifesto, 1919
alter Gropius created the government-sponsored Bauhaus by merging the Saxony-Weimar Higher School of the Arts with the Saxony School of Applied Art. A manifesto from this time laid out his argument for combining arts and crafts. The word “Bauhaus” refers to the medieval “bauhutte,” an organization of artisans combining skills to build a cathedral (not merely, as has sometimes been suggested, any sort of building). Fittingly, Lyonel Feininger used an image of a soaring gothic cathedral on the cover Gropius’ manifesto.