49.6

_“The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building!”_ --- Walter Gropius – Manifesto
...if you want to read the full text of the “Bauhaus Manifesto” … http://www.dmoma.org/lobby/Bauhaus_manifesto.html

I could say so many things about this building ...about Walter Gropius ...about Bauhaus.. It would be like talking about how we arrived at the point we are now in modern architecture, in modern art, who were our “fathers” in terms of creators and creations. This building is much more than a building. It's a symbol. Together with the old Bauhaus University in Weimar, designed by Henry van de Velde and the new one in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius himself, the Bauhaus Museum in Berlin, also designed by Gropius, reminds of one of the most daring and creative periods in modern art and architecture. So many minds of the 20th century have passed through one of these three buildings, either teaching or studying there, so many products of their work are still a reference in modern art history.
Just a few names ...Wassily Kandinsky (the founder of the group Der Blaue Reiter, which I particularily love), Paul Klee, Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks, El Lissitsky, Theo van Doesburg and so many others.
Bauhaus movement had a major impact, first on the architecture, then on all kinds of art in Europe and North America mostly, but also all around the world. And it still has, after almost a century from its birth. Its promoters managed to raise the functionality to the level of art and showed to the world the beauty of the simple forms, taught us that form always has to follow the content and sincerity in building means beauty.

I could spend hours talking about this, but it will probably be boring for many, so I'll stop now and just say that what I wanted with this photo was to show in just one image how I feel about this building: the magic of blending order with fantasy, that's what I see here. Simple volumes, no decoration, but put together they look and sound like a poem, and the shapes and the white of the roof makes me think about the sea and its waves on a windy day...