A hundred years ago, the feminist revolution began in the Bauhaus
A hundred years ago, the feminist revolution began in the Bauhaus
At some points in history fate has brought together privileged minds that were responsible for great creative breakthroughs. To this day we enjoy the results of these encounters. This was the case in Ancient Greece, the Italian Renaissance, and exactly one hundred years ago, in April 1919, at the iconic Bauhaus.
A group of masters and apprentices joined forces to revolutionize the way of living. The boundaries between architecture, painting, sculpture, drawing and a host of other artistic manifestations were blurred and a multidisciplinary vision was established. Under the aegis of the thought "form follows function", modern philosophy advocated the utmost in functionalism.
It is agreed that the Bauhaus legacy represents a true cultural revolution, both in terms of aesthetics and industrial scale production. There was born the design as we know today. The school introduced the use of prefabricated materials, the simplification of volumes, geometrization of shapes and predominance of straight lines.
A little known face of this school gains, in contemporary days, significant relevance: it represented the entrance door for women in the creative universe. The initial idea was to reserve one third of the places for women, but soon they were in equal numbers in planning, production and criticism.
At first, after a rigorous selection, they were sent to the weaving department. There they were fully responsible for the process, from creation to equipment maintenance. They soon began to take part in photography and sculpture workshops. For many years they were denied access to architecture courses on the pretext that the professors of the discipline feared an overly decorative tendency. They feared an architecture that was too feminine.
They were right to be afraid. Little did they anticipate that the feminine concentrates within itself ideas and ideals very similar to those of the Bauhaus: balance, simplicity, naturalness... it drinks from the arts to humanise industry and revolutionise everything it touches.
We have come to do much more than tapestry. We certainly make the world a lot more feminine!
Architect Ingrid Stemmer
Project Director at Stemmer Rodrigues Architecture
