Modernist art is known for its simple geometric shapes,
like circles, squares, or triangles.
The artists only used a few colours: white, black, grey and
the primary colours red, blue and yellow.

With very little design and simple shapes
the art looks very classy.
This shows: even with few elements
you can achieve good results.
This style is called minimalism.

In design and painting, you can also see constructivism.
This is an art style of the period of modernism.
It has strong lines, for example,
that look like they were drawn with a ruler.
They split surfaces into squares or triangles.

You can also find examples of this in graphics:
like colour fields in squares of different sizes
that are on top of each other.
Drawings, pictures, and posters are examples of graphics.

In the period of modernism,
architecture also used simple geometric shapes.
Architects built white houses that looked like cubes, for example.
They houses had a flat roof and
windows that were next to each other like strips.
You could divide the flats into different areas as you wished.
Terraces brought plenty of light and air to the flats.
That improved the quality of people’s lives a lot.

The ball-shaped house in the city of Dresden was
a very special building.
It was the first building in the world that was shaped like a ball.
It was made of metal inside and out.

In the period of modernism, people also developed
a desire for high speed.
People wanted to move independently and quickly
from one place to another.
One example of this is a motorcycle called White Mars.

At the time of modernism, you could find
abstract art also in photography:
shapes from nature looked like
figures or buildings in photos, for example.
These shapes were sometimes made bigger or smaller.
Sometimes, the photos only showed parts of them.
Especially in advertising photography,
people experimented with their photos.
They arranged things in a special way, for example, and
they worked with light and shadow.

People wanted more light and air in their homes.
They wanted everything to be more transparent and cleaner.
All of this led to big changes in architecture and design.

People were trying new things in art and graphics too.
They were no longer limited by old rules.
They abandoned old shapes and designs.

They created completely new buildings:
the buildings were made from iron,
reinforced concrete and glass.

Furniture was made of steel pipes, aluminium and
shaped plywood.
The outside of new electrical devices
was made from new types of plastic such as Bakelite.

Transparency was also important for sculptures and paintings.
New art forms appeared: collages and photomontages.
Collage is pronounced like this: co-lah-sh
For a collage, you put different snippets of pictures together
to create a new picture.
Montage is pronounced like this: mon-tah-sh
For a photomontage, you put different photos together
to create a new picture.

The idea of what is beautiful had also changed in photography.
People, nature, and objects looked different in photos
than they had before.
That was possible thanks to smaller cameras that were easier to handle.
Artists rediscovered collotypes for their work.
This is a special photographic printing technique.
With this technique, you could print many documents.
Films, cinema, and radio were new types of entertainment.

There were these new forms of art and craft,
but people also believed in progress through technology.
In the period of modernism, there were many new possibilities:
Factories could produce items in large numbers.
At the same time, there were
new strict standards for many items.
Electricity provided light and power.
People saw all of this as a great advantage at the time.

In 1919, the Bauhaus was founded in the city of Weimar.
The Bauhaus was an art school
that moved to the city of Dessau in 1925.
The Bauhaus developed new ideas and
spread new design possibilities beyond Germany.

Architecture, visual arts, and design
should better consider the people’s needs.
Graphics and photography are examples of visual arts.
But only in 1927, the Bauhaus started teaching architecture.

However, the new modernist architecture
had already spread before:
in private architecture offices and in the building authorities of
the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Hamburg.
The Bavarian Post Office’s Building Administration
also constructed buildings following the principles of new building.

From 1922 on, the Kunst-Gewerbe-Schule
was also important for the new developments in architecture.
The Kunst-Gewerbe-Schule was an applied arts college.
It was at the castle of Burg Giebichenstein
in the city of Halle an der Saale.
In 1927, it started teaching photography for the first time.

Museums and similar institutions helped
to present modernist art to the public.
One example of these cultural institutions
is Die Neue Sammlung.
It was founded in 1925.
Until 1946, it was an independent department
of the Bayerisches National-Museum.
In English, this means Bavarian National Museum.

Many groups of artists thought about this and
wrote their own statements.
These statements are called manifestos.
In the manifestos, the artists presented ideas for the future
of how people could live together in a different way.

Therefore, art and photography also dealt
with these 2 opposites:
• the clear view of life and of people as they really were.
Examples of this are pictures of men
who were wounded in war.
• the perfect idea of how a person should be in modern times.
Examples of this are pictures of women
who take control of their own lives.

The period after the First World War until 1933
is called Weimar Republic.
The name comes from the German city of Weimar.
During that time, the most important political task
was to create housing.
In the cities, people built large housing estates,
recreation homes and flats for single people.

Many people had little money.
The furniture had to be cheap, last for a long time and
be usable in different ways.
But there was also expensive furniture.
It was built in the style of high-rise buildings
that existed in the USA.

The big challenge for society in Germany was this situation:
Germany had lost the First World War.
All over the world, the economy was in crisis.
The differences between the political parties
became much stronger.
These problems in society also contributed
to the success of National Socialism.
National Socialism was a political movement
in the years from 1933 to 1945.
Adolf Hitler led the movement.

Art and design during National Socialism took over
many ideas from modernism.
However, a design was only considered nice and beautiful
if it matched the ideas of National Socialism.