“This is an absolute triumph—ideas, lives, and the dramas of the twentieth century are woven together in a feat of storytelling. A masterpiece.” —Edmund de Waal, ceramic artist and author of The White Road
The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildings—Fagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Am—but no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki: countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design.
Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women’s artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as “a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated.”
Gropius offers a poignant and personal story—and a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism.
Fiona MacCarthy was the author of William Morris: A Life for Our Time, winner of the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers’ Guild Nonfiction Award, and the well-received Byron: Life and Legend. A former design correspondent for The Guardian and architecture critic for The Observer, she curated exhibits at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London. MacCarthy was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art.
Table of Contents
Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Gropius Family Tree Preface: The Silver Prince First Life: Germany Chapter 1. Berlin 1883–1907 Chapter 2. Spain 1907–1908 Chapter 3. Berlin 1908–1910 Chapter 4. Vienna and Alma Mahler 1910–1913 Chapter 5. Gropius at War 1914–1918 Chapter 6. Bauhaus Weimar and Lily Hildebrandt 1919–1920 Chapter 7. Bauhaus Weimar and Maria Benemann 1920–1922 Chapter 8. Bauhaus Weimar and Ise Gropius 1923–1925 Chapter 9. Bauhaus Dessau 1925–1926 Chapter 10. Bauhaus Dessau 1927–1928 Chapter 11. America 1928 Chapter 12. Berlin 1928–1932 Chapter 13. Berlin 1933–1934 Second Life: England Chapter 14. London, Berlin, Rome 1934 Chapter 15. London 1934 Chapter 16. London 1935 Chapter 17. London 1935–1936 Chapter 18. London 1936–1937 Third Life: America Chapter 19. Harvard 1937–1939 Chapter 20. Harvard and the Second World War 1940–1944 Chapter 21. Return to Berlin 1945–1947 Chapter 22. Harvard and TAC 1948–1952 Chapter 23. Wandering Star: Japan, Paris, London, Baghdad, Berlin 1953–1959 Chapter 24. New England 1960–1969 Afterword: Reverberations Sources and References Acknowledegments Index Plates Section
