Bauhaus (Canada) 101

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Henry Kalen, Courtyard of the Russell Building, ca. 1960

(Russell Building, 84 Curry Place, Winnipeg, 1958-59. Smith, Carter, Katelnikoff. Ernest Smith, Partner in Charge. A. J. Donahue, Principle Designer with Douglas Gillmor. Grant Marshall, Interior Design) Courtesy of the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections

The School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba celebrates the centenary of the legendary German design school with Bauhaus (Canada) 101. 

The show, curated by Oliver Botar, is on view from Feb. 13 to March 27. It's the second show in Western Canada to look at how the Bauhaus influenced Canadian art, design and architecture. Harcourt House in Edmonton presented Edmonton and the Bauhaus last fall.

The Winnipeg exhibition provides a crash course on the Bauhaus, founded in 1919. 

A number of Canadians studied under former Bauhaus directors Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, and important Bauhaus teachers, such as Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and György Kepes, who all settled in the Unites States just before the Second World War. 

Canadian students then brought Bauhaus ideas back to Canada, particularly to the University of Manitoba School of Architecture. 

Three Bauhaus alumni settled in Canada, including artist Andor Weininger, a key figure in the social life of the original Bauhaus, and David Feist, a photographer and graphic designer best known for his Bick’s Pickles logo and ad campaign.  

Breuer built a cottage near Lake of the Woods and a factory in Oakville, Ont. Mies designed three major developments in Toronto and Montreal, largely due to the influence of Montrealer and Mies student Phyllis Lambert, founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, the first woman in Canada to become a dean of architecture (at the University of Toronto), were among the first women to graduate from the Harvard School of Design and both had studied with Gropius. A number of Canadians studied at Moholy-Nagy’s Institute of Design in Chicago and returned home to transform childrens’ art education.

This exhibition reveals how Métis architects Douglas Cardinal and Étienne Gaboury were inspired by Bauhaus ideals early in their careers.

Similarly, prominent Indigenous artist Alex Janvier acknowledges the effect that Bauhaus professor Wassily Kandinsky had on his practice, while the Structurist artists of the Prairies, students of Eli Bornstein at the University of Saskatchewan, were partly rooted in Bauhaus aesthetics. 

Source: University of Manitoba