Ways to the Bauhaus

Paintings, sculptures and designs highlighting the dynamic forays into the modernist era.

Just a short distance away from the Bauhaus Museum, the Museum Neues Weimar showcases the avant-garde movement around 1900. In 1902, two devoted proponents of modernism arrived in Weimar, the Belgian Jugendstil artist Henry van de Velde and the collector and art patron Harry Graf Kessler. Together with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the sister of the famous philosopher who passed away in Weimar in 1900, they joined forces to create the “New Weimar” – a meeting place for Europe’s cultural elite. Förster-Nietzsche fostered the cult that venerated her brother’s legacy. Kessler organised ground-breaking exhibitions, and Van de Velde created functional but elegant interior designs. It was his school that later became the Bauhaus in 1919. The exhibition presents the pioneers of modernism with some 500 works including pieces by such internationally renowned artists as Monet and Rodin. The installation “The Room” by Pipilotti Rist is a contemporary intervention which calls into question how we perceive our own bodies.