50 Years After 50 Years of the Bauhaus

On the legacy of a landmark Bauhaus exhibition and the school's intersection with the Situationist International and other avant-garde movements

On May 4, 1968, a few hours after student protesters in Paris caused the Sorbonne to be evacuated, the landmark exhibition 50 Years Bauhaus opened at the Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart. Conceived by Herbert Bayer, Ludwig Grote, Hans Maria Wingler and Dieter Honisch, the show is still regarded as the most influential postwar exhibition on the Bauhaus. Fifty years after its opening, the Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein undertook a critical rereading of the 1968 exhibition, with a focus on the ambiguous relationship that prominent members of the Bauhaus had with National Socialism and the murky connections between artistic avant-gardes and the military-industrial complex. While the 1968 exhibition historicized the reception of the Bauhaus, reducing it to West Germany and the US, this publication reflects on the school in the context of artistic movements such as the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the Situationist International.