Bauhaus_100 (x3)

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Bauhaus_90.
A BunkerType tribute to Bauhaus, the school of architecture, design and arts & crafts founded in Weimar in 1919, in commemoration of the centenary of its foundation .

Three stages, three venues, three directors, three geometric figures. The concept of Trinity seems almost linked to the history of Bauhaus, and this is what BunkerType wanted to show in its latest project “Bauhaus_100 (x3)”, a triptych that pays tribute to the great school of architecture, design, crafts and art founded in Weimar in 1919, which this year commemorates the centenary of its inauguration.

You may not know it but it is part of your life, of the image you have of the world. In fact, it is the basic backbone of the visual arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bauhaus is the school, the project that absolutely determined the way in which we understand the form of furniture, architecture, objects and graphic design during the last two centuries. And this despite the fact that the fascists tried to bury it in oblivion. What they did not know is that Bauhaus was seed and flourished. And it still flowers.

Bauhaus was the discovery that what is useful and popular can also be beautiful, uniting Art with Technique, giving a new meaning to the term “Craftsmanship”, combating the ugliness and misery of the industrial, dirty, rusty and dusty era. Bauhaus opened a gap between clouds of smoke and the light penetrated. And it is already 100 years of light that continue shining in all its splendor, jovial and fresh, like a spring afternoon.

It is not easy to escape from the clichés and remain recognisable, so Jesus Morentin –the only inhabitant of the Bunker– seems to directly assume the clichés in order to deal with them in a way that one does not expect. The recurring basic geometric forms appear, but not as signifying elements, but as simple containers. Images appear, but not portraying the already known works or spaces, but the intangibility of the spirit of those who inhabited the school and their adventures.

According to the text of Juan Agustín Marcano that accompanies the project “adventures of discovery and equality, where merit and amusement flowed without complexes, daring to break each and every one of the established conventions”. Even the non-negotiable primary colours transmute to primary metals (gold, silver and bronze) emphasising, even more so, the singularity of the commemoration...

A collection consisting of three compositions, as it is always the case with BunkerType, printed with movable types of wood and lead, in which all the processes -both assembly and printing- have been entirely manual and which complete the historical revision works that Jesús Morentin began with “The New Call” -in which he reinterpreted the paradigmatic magazine edited by a Dutch artist between 1923 and 1926; “Spain Is Different” his personal and critical vision of Spanish society and politics - in which, thanks to collaboration with the Gerd Arntz Estate Foundation, he interpreted the unique and rich iconic universe of the German graphic artist - and “Futura_90”, a tribute to the typeface designed by Paul Renner in 1927 on the occasion of his ninetieth anniversary.