Bauhaus and Culture in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakian students at Bauhaus 1919-1933

Provider and number: GAČR 13-28594S

Duration: 2013–2015

Recitient: Institute of Art History, CAS

Principal investigator: Markéta Svobodová

The paper focuses on providing a comprehensive and detailed summary of the influence of the Bauhaus on culture in Czechoslovakia, and represents the culmination of several years of archival research in Czech, Slovak, Austrian, and Russian state and private archives. Most of these archival materials have never been published before. German institutions are also interested in publishing them, in particular the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. The project’s main topic is works by students from the former Czechoslovakia (from Czech, Slovak, German, or German-Jewish cultural backgrounds), who studied various fields at the school and who have so far received insufficient attention or none at all. I have expanded the paper to include general philosophical aspects, criticism of Bauhaus in the Czechoslovak media, and the activities of foreign Bauhaus students in Czechoslovakia. I have also focused my efforts at assessing the influence of the ideas of the Bauhaus on the theoretical and methodological aspects of teaching at schools of applied art in the former Czechoslovakia.

CEP