The Other Art History : The Forgotten Women of Bauhaus | Art for Sale | Artspace
▻https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_depth/the-other-art-history-the-forgotten-women-of-bauhaus-55526
So technically women were allowed to study at the school, however the scope of disciplines they were encouraged to partake in were limited. Gropius famously believed that men and women’s brains operated differently––specifically, men had the capacity to think in three dimensions while women did not. Therefore many of the women artists of the Bauhaus movement stuck to practices commonly regarded as “women’s work”––textiles and weaving. Men, on the other hand, were encouraged to be architects, sculptors, and painters.
So it’s really no surprise that although the Bauhaus movement was largely populated by women, the seminal works that are remembered in art historical retellings are those of Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee––basically: men. Now we’re not discrediting the work of these aforementioned artists, however it’s kind of a bummer that when we talk about this major movement in modern art, women are basically written out of the narrative (or if they are mentioned––they’re written about as the wives or counterparts of great artists).
In the past decade, (only about 90 years later), it’s come to light that these women were not just the plus-ones of great minds, but rather some of the formative artists of the Bauhaus movement themselves. In honor of these long-forgotten artists, we highlighted eight women of the Bauhaus movement whose influence has had lasting effects on contemporary art.
