Kirjahaku

Tells the fascinating story of the journey taken by the Bauhaus – both the concept behind the school and some of the individuals who represented it – from Germany to Britain and the USA. Bauhaus Goes West is a story of cultural exchange, not only between the Bauhaus émigrés and the countries to which they moved, but also in the other direction, focusing in particular on Britain. Most significantly, perhaps, it considers in detail the presence in the UK during the 1930s of three of the school’s most important figures – Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy – using meticulous research to tell for the first time the stories of their British experiences in parallel. After considering some of the lesser-known Bauhäusler who stayed in Britain for life, the book concludes by returning to the lives of the main protagonists and their continuation of the Bauhaus ideals in America. Taking as its starting point the cultural connection between Britain and Germany in the early part of the 20th century, Bauhaus Goes West offers a timely re-evaluation of the school’s influence on and relationship with modern art and design, offering fresh insights and challenging assumptions along the way.

Bauhaus Goes West is a story of cultural exchange – between the Bauhaus émigrés in the years following the school’s closure in 1933 and the countries to which they moved, focusing in particular on Britain. Taking as its starting point the cultural connections between the UK and Germany in the early part of the 20th century, the book offers a timely re-evaluation of the school’s influence on and relationship with modern art and design in Britain, concluding with the school’s American legacy. Following the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, teachers and students found new opportunities in Britain and the United States. Among them were Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, who simultaneously spent time in London before moving to America, an episode often overlooked but freshly explored here in the context of the interaction between German Modernism and British-based design reform from 1900. Other Bauhaus-trained artists – women as well as men – stayed in the UK and made important contributions into the 1960s. In America, Mies van der Rohe and Josef and Anni Albers had significant late careers, but, over time, the Bauhaus became a shorthand for Modernism’s failure. Now, the centenary of the school’s founding provides a key opportunity to reconsider how its values emerged and were contested both during its lifetime and beyond.

Edward Ardizzone RA (1900-79) was one of relatively few British artists who defined the field of illustration for their generation. Although his work as an artist and illustrator was wide-ranging, it is for his illustrated children's books, almost continuously available since they were first published from the late 1930s onwards, that he is best known. This book provides the first fully illustrated survey of Ardizzone's work, analysing his activity as an artist and illustrator in the context of 20th-century British art, illustration, printing and publishing. Copiously illustrated with many previously unpublished images, Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator also contributes more broadly to the current reassessment and investigation of mid-20th-century British art and illustration. Alan Powers (author of the bestselling Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer) has written a critically considered text which draws for the first time on the family's archives, those of Ardizzone's publishers, and conversations with those who knew the artist. This beautiful and enlightening book, which reflects in its design and production values the aesthetic of an artist who was closely involved in the production of his own illustrated books, will be a fascinating read both for specialists as well as for readers who have grown up with the unforgettable characters of Ardizzone's classic children's stories.

More popular than ever, the work of Eric Ravilious (1903-42) is rooted in the landscape of pre-war and early wartime England. This best-selling book by Alan Powers, the established authority on Ravilious, provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the artist's work in all media - watercolour, illustration, printmaking, graphic design, textiles and ceramics - and firmly positions Ravilious as a major figure in the history of early 20th-century British art.Now available in paperback, the accessible and engaging text, copiously illustrated with reproductions of work drawn from a range of sources, discusses the part Ravilious' work played in creating an English style, positioned between tradition and modernism, and borrowing from naive and popular art of the past. The book analyses Ravilious' different spheres of activity in turn, covering his education and formative influences, his mural painting, his printmaking and illustration, his work as leader in forming a new style of watercolour painting between the wars and his final period as an official War Artist. In a career curtailed by an early death, Ravilious also played a significant role as a designer; Powers argues that Ravilious showed how decoration and historical reference could find a place in the reform of the applied arts whilst simultaneously renewing a sense of national identity.Eric Ravilious will be welcomed by all those with an interest in an artist whose imagination was backed by great skill and a sharp eye for the unusual.