Herbert Bayer
Biography
The man who gave the Bauhaus its lettering learned to paint walls in Weimar first — four years as a student here, before the typography anyone can recognise.
A student of the Weimar years
Born at Haag am Hausruck in Austria-Hungary in 1900, Bayer came to the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1921 and took Johannes Itten's preliminary course in 1921–22. From 1922 to 1924/25 he worked in the wall painting department under Wassily Kandinsky — four formative years in this town, none of them yet spent on the thing he is famous for.
Lettering came after Weimar
It was at Dessau, as a Jungmeister from 1925, that he took charge of the newly founded workshop for printing and advertising and ran it until 1928. The sans-serif alphabet without capitals, the posters and the exhibition graphics that made the Bauhaus look like the Bauhaus were made there, by a man the Weimar school had trained in a wall-painting workshop.
Afterwards
He left the Bauhaus in 1928 and later emigrated, dying at Montecito in California in 1985. His Weimar record is the ordinary one for the school's students: no famous object made here, and an education that shows in everything made later.
Notable Works & Achievements
the Bauhaus printing and advertising workshop at Dessau (1925–1928)
Connected Places in Weimar
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
He studied in the school's Weimar buildings from 1921 to 1925.
Historical Context
A student of the Weimar years who became a Jungmeister at Dessau in 1925.
The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 and voted out by 1925 — time enough to change what a design school is, and not enough for the town that made it to keep it.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1900
1985
Austrian