Herbert Bayer
Section Allemande
1930
Exhibition bochure. 14.8 x 21 cm. 44 pages with numerous photographic illustrations. Publisher Hermann Reckendorf G.m.b.H., Berlin. - Slight traces of usage. The cellophane jacket is not extant..
Supplement: Inflation banknote 1923 (series D), designed by Herbert Bayer for the State of Thuringia
Siegfried Giedion described Herbert Bayer's exhibition catalogue, conceived for the German section of the 1930 exhibition of the “Société des Artistes Décorateur” in the Grand Palais in Paris, as a “small typographic masterwork” (cf. Wallis Miller, op.cit.). Today it is an antiquarian rarity. Herbert Bayer congenially translated the sequence of the five-room exhibition into the medium of the book by means of his innovative, lively graphic design, thus making it tangible for the viewer. Walter Gropius - who had taken over the artistic direction of the “Section Allemande” on behalf of the Deutscher Werkbund - as well as László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer and Herbert Bayer himself designed the exhibition spaces in which Germany's contribution to contemporary design was presented.
Provenance
Private collection, Paris
Literature
Magdalena Droste, Herbert Bayer: Das künstlerische Werk 1918 – 1938, exhib.cat. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Berlin 1982, ill, p. 134; Gerd Fleischmann (ed.), Bauhaus: Drucksachen, Typographie, Reklame, Düsseldorf 1984, ill, pp. 280-283; Ute Brüning (ed.), Das A und O des Bauhauses: Bauhauswerbung, Schriftbilder, Drucksachen, Ausstellungsdesign, exhib.cat. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin et al., Leipzig 1995, ill, pp. 251; Michel Wlassikoff, Histoire du graphisme en France, Paris 2005, ill. p. 102; Patrick Rössler (ed.), Herbert Bayer. Die Berliner Jahre. Werbegraphik 1928 – 1938, exhib.cat. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Berlin 2013; Wallis Miller, Points of View: Herbert Bayer’s Exhibition Catalogue for the 1930 Section Allemande. Architectural Histories, 5(1), 2017 (http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.221, 10.05.2021)
Exhibitions
Paris 2016/2017 (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), L'Ésprit du Bauhaus