Women of the Bauhaus: A Legacy, is a curated exhibition and exhibition catalog designed for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Digital Design | Print
For this class project, we were tasked with choosing 9-12 objects from an art period and analyzing them in terms of their cultural significance. Then we authored a research paper, which became the basis for our exhibition catalog and design system. My art period was the Bauhaus!
When people think of the Bauhaus, they usually think of Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, or Paul Klee – all men very closely associated with the Bauhaus and its style, but there were actually many talented women who went relatively unnoticed during and after the school’s short fourteen-year existence.
This exhibition not only explores the work of the female artists of the Bauhaus, but also the tangible and substantial influence they have had on modern female artists through the years.
Claire Zeisler - American Textile Artist
I created this exhibition catalog to highlight and celebrate the direct correlations between the amazing work of the Bauhaus women and modern women artists.
For example, Gertrud Arndt was a student of the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1927. Originally determined to study architecture, she was forced into weaving and textiles, but it was after her departure from the Bauhaus that she found her niche in her photographic experiments. Her most well- known works, the Maskenportäts were a series of self-portrait photographs in which she used lace, veils, and strange makeup to portray different modes of femininity: a child, a femme fatale, and a widow, amongst many others.
Like Gertrud Arndt, Modern American photographer Cindy Sherman also used costumes and makeup to change her appearance and play with the idea of disguise. Her series of the Untitled Film Stills, started when she was only twenty-three and living in New York City, contained seventy photographs of herself dressed as various characters and archetypes from 20th Century Hollywood B-movies. She did not shy away from the morbid or grotesque, much like her Bauhaus predecessor, Gertrud Arndt.
