HERBERT BAYER 1900-1985 - Lot 40

HERBERT BAYER 1900-1985 Morning in Paris, 1925. Photograph. Posterior silver print, signed, titled and dated in pencil on the back. Vertical fold. Image: 22.7 x 15.7; sheet: 24.7 x 20.1 cm Artistic mathematician Herbert Bayer was one of the most influential students, teachers and advocates of the Bauhaus, advocating the integration of all the arts throughout his career. From 1921, he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, studying mural painting with Vassily Kandinsky and typography, creating the Universal Alphabet, a typeface composed entirely of lowercase letters that would become the Bauhaus signature font. Bayer works as a teacher of advertising, design and typography, integrating photographs into his graphic compositions. He began making his own photographs in 1925, during his years as a teacher, the school being fertile ground for the New Vision photography passionately promoted by his colleague László Moholy-Nagy. Most of Bayer's photographs date from the time when he was working as a commercial artist in Berlin. They represent his broad approach to art, including carefully conceived graphic views of architecture. In 1938, Bayer emigrated to the United States at the invitation of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to apply his theories to the installation of the exhibition Bauhaus: 1919-1928. Bayer was able to develop this role through close collaboration with Edward Steichen, head of the fledgling photography department, in designing the Road to Victory exhibition (1942), which would pave the way for Steichen's influential approach to photographic exhibition.