Architects, sculptors painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a ‘profession.’ There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. – Walter Gropius
The ultimate, if distant, aim of the Bauhaus is the unified work of art – the great structure – in which there is no distinction between monumental and decorative art. – Walter Gropius
The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art – sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and crafts – as inseparable components of a new architecture. – Walter Gropius
The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again. – Walter Gropius
The development of the New Architecture encountered serious obstacles at a very early stage of its development. Conflicting theories and the dogmas enunciated in architects’ personal manifestos all helped to confuse the main issue. – Walter Gropius
The days of the painter at the Bauhaus appear to be truly over. They are estranged from the actual core of present activities, and their influence is more restricting than inspiring. – Walter Gropius
The utilization of flat roofs as ‘grounds’ offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft. – Walter Gropius
The general public, formerly profoundly indifferent to everything to do with building, has been shaken out of its torpor; personal interest in architecture as something that concerns every one of us in our daily lives has been very widely aroused; and the broad line of its future development are already clearly discernible. – Walter Gropius
Proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination. Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! – Walter Gropius
The strong desire to include every vital component of life instead of excluding part of them for the sake of too narrow and dogmatic an approach has characterized my whole life. – Walter Gropius
Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. – Walter Gropius
One of the outstanding achievements of the new constructional technique has been the abolition of the separating function of the wall. – Walter Gropius
Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting. – Walter Gropius
If we investigate the vague feelings of the average man towards the arts, we find that he is timid and that he has developed a humble belief that art is something which has been invented centuries ago in countries like Greece or Italy and that all we can do about it is study it carefully and apply it. – Walter Gropius
Under trees, the urban dweller might restore his troubled soul and find the blessing of a creative pause. – Walter Gropius
I am livid with rage, sitting here in chains through this mad war which kills any meaning of life… My nerves are shattered and my mind darkened. – Walter Gropius
The fear that individuality will be crushed out by the growing ‘tyranny’ of standardization is the sort of myth which cannot withstand the briefest examination. – Walter Gropius
New synthetic substances – steel, concrete, glass – are actively superseding the traditional raw materials of construction. – Walter Gropius
Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. – Walter Gropius
If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality. – Walter Gropius
Our fresh technical resources have furthered the disintegration of solid masses of masonry into slender piers, with consequent far-reaching economies in bulk, space, weight, and haulage. – Walter Gropius
Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward Heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. – Walter Gropius
The school is the servant of the workshop and will one day be absorbed in it. Therefore there will be no teachers or pupils in the Bauhaus but masters, journeymen, and apprentices. – Walter Gropius
