László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts. The art critic Peter Schjeldahl called him "relentlessly experimental" because of his pioneering work in painting, drawing, photography, collage, sculpture, film, theater, and writing.
Marianne Brandt was a German painter, sculptor, photographer, metalsmith, and designer who studied at the Bauhaus art school in Weimar and later became head of the Bauhaus Metall-Werkstatt in Dessau in 1928. Today, Brandt's designs for household objects such as lamps and ashtrays are considered timeless examples of modern industrial design. Although she pursued painting early in life and attended a private art school and the Grand Ducal College of Art in Weimar from 1912–1917, where she produced many works in the Expressionists style and also studied sculpture, the artist is best known for her sleek and elegant industrial designs.Brandt also worked with photography at the Bauhaus, taking photographs that featured unusual angles—in particular, self-portraits—and disorienting and distorting reflections in glass and metal surfaces.She worked as head of the design department of the company Ruppelwerk Metallwarenfabrik GmbH in Gotha until 1932. In 1949, she worked at the University of Applied Arts until 1954. In the year, 1954 she also supervised the exhibition, The German applied art of the GDR) in Beijing and Shanghai in 1953–54. She also created photomontages.
MillerKnoll, Inc., doing business as Herman Miller, is an American company that produces office furniture, equipment, and home furnishings. Its best known designs include the Aeron chair, Noguchi table, Marshmallow sofa, Mirra chair, and the Eames Lounge Chair. Herman Miller is also credited with the 1968 invention of the office cubicle under then-director of research Robert Propst.
Biomorphism models artistic design elements on naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature and living organisms. Taken to its extreme it attempts to force naturally occurring shapes onto functional devices. In his search for architectural reform the French architecte Viollet le Duc is the first to express this idea clearly : Like a botanist, Viollet le Duc analyzes details of nature in his books, subsequently making them undergo metamorphoses.
The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is a lounge chair and ottoman manufactured and sold by American furniture company Herman Miller. Introduced in 1956, the Eames Lounge Chair was designed by Charles and Ray Eames and is made of molded plywood and leather. It was the first chair the Eameses designed for the high-end market. The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman are part of the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favour of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.
Wilhelm Wagenfeld was a German industrial designer and former student of the Bauhaus art school. He designed glass and metal works for the Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen., the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke in Weißwasser, Rosenthal, Braun GmbH and WMF. Some of his designs are still produced to this day.
Vitra is a Swiss family-owned furniture company with headquarters in Birsfelden, Switzerland. It is the manufacturer of the works of many furniture designers. Vitra is also known for the works of notable architects that make up its premises in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in particular the Vitra Design Museum.
Alexander Girard, affectionately known as Sandro, was an architect, interior designer, furniture designer, industrial designer, and a textile designer.
Knoll is an American company that manufactures office systems, seating, storage systems, tables, desks, textiles, and accessories for the home, office, and higher education. The company is the licensed manufacturer of furniture designed by architects and designers such as Harry Bertoia, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, Florence Knoll, Frank Gehry, Charles Gwathmey, Maya Lin, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, and Lella and Massimo Vignelli, under the company's KnollStudio division. Over 40 Knoll designs can be found in the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Charles Ormond Eames Jr. was an American designer, architect and filmmaker. In professional partnership with his spouse Ray Kaiser Eames, he made groundbreaking contributions in the fields of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts.
Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames was an American artist and designer who worked in a variety of media.
Charles Eames and Ray Eames were an American married couple of industrial designers who made significant historical contributions to the development of modern architecture and furniture through the work of the Eames Office. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art, and film. Charles was the public face of the Eames Office, but Ray and Charles worked together as creative partners and employed a diverse creative staff. Among their most recognized designs is the Eames Lounge Chair and the Eames Dining Chair.
Donald "Don" T. Chadwick is an American industrial designer specializing in office seating.
Florence Henri was a surrealist artist; primarily focusing her practice on photography and painting, in addition to pianist composition. In her childhood, she traveled throughout Europe, spending portions of her youth in Paris, Vienna, and the Isle of Wight. She studied in Rome, where she would encounter the Futurists, finding inspiration in their movement. From 1910 to 1922, she studied piano in Berlin, under the instruction of Egon Petri and Ferrucio Busoni. She would find herself landlocked to Berlin during the first World War, supporting herself by composing piano tracks for silent films. She returned to Paris in 1922, to attend the Académie André Lhote, and would attend until the end of 1923. From 1924 to 1925, she would study under painters Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant at the Académie Moderne. Henri's most important artistic training would come from the Bauhaus in Dessau, in 1927, where she studied with masters Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, who would introduce her to the medium of photography. She returned to Paris in 1929 where she started seriously experimenting and working with photography up until 1963. Finally, she would move to Compiègne, where she concentrated her energies on painting until the end of her life in 1982. Her work includes experimental photography, advertising, and portraits, many of which featured other artists of the time.
The Neues Sehen, also known as New Vision or Neue Optik, was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the Bauhaus. Neues Sehen considered photography to be an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting, through which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. This way of seeing was based on the use of unexpected framings, the search for contrast in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc. The movement was contemporary with New Objectivity with which it shared a defence of photography as a specific medium of artistic expression, although Neues Sehen favoured experimentation and the use of technical means in photographic expression.
Don Charles Albinson was an American industrial designer who made many contributions to the world of furniture. He worked with Charles and Ray Eames for 13 years, helping develop many of the seminal Herman Miller furniture pieces from the mid century – the bent plywood chair, the fiberglass shell chair, the aluminum group set, and the Eames Lounge chair, to name a few. He later developed the Knoll Stack chair, the Westinghouse office line, an update to the DoMore Series 7 landscape system named Neo 7, the Albi stack chair for Fixtures, and the Bounce chair for Stylex.
The Good Design exhibition series was an industrial design program organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, in cooperation with the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, held between 1950 and 1955. No awards were granted to designers whose work was put on view in these exhibitions, despite misinformation suggesting otherwise.
Farkas "Wolfgang" Ferenc Molnár (1897–1945) was a Hungarian architect, painter, essayist, and graphic artist. He is associated with the first generation of Bauhaus movement, and was active in Budapest.
Marli Ehrman née Marie Helene Heimann (1904–1982) was a German-American textile artist, designer and educator. She studied weaving at the Bauhaus, graduating in 1927. While working as a handicrafts teacher at a Berlin school for Jewish children, she married the history teacher Eliezer Ehrman. After the couple emigrated to the United States she taught weaving at the School of Design in Chicago, gaining recognition when she won first prize for her furniture fabrics from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She went on to create weaving designs for industry and managed interior design work on a variety of buildings including the Oak Park Public Library.
