Description
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (German: 'Workers council for art' or 'Art Soviet') was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the workers' and soldiers' councils and was dedicated to bringing current developments and tendencies in architecture and art to a broader population.
The Arbeitsrat worked closely with the Novembergruppe and the Deutscher Werkbund. Some of the architects represented in the Arbeitsrat united in the Glass Chain, or joined the correspondence group, Der Ring. Many members were important founders of the Bauhaus. Individual members informed the most important German academy of art of the time, the Staatliche Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe Breslau, as well as the Bauhaus. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Bruno Taut
Founder and visionary architect who penned the Architekturprogramm manifesto, championing utopian glass architecture and collective social design.
Walter Gropius
Key leadership committee member who organized the group's architectural exhibitions and merged its radical utopian principles into the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919.
Adolf Behne
Co-founder, architectural critic, and key theorist who articulated the social function of modern architecture and connected the council with international avant-garde networks.
César Klein
Expressionist painter and stage designer who served on the four-man management committee alongside Taut, Gropius, and Behne, organizing collaborative art action.
Max Pechstein
Celebrated Die Brücke Expressionist painter who created radical woodcut covers and posters for the Arbeitsrat and Novembergruppe publications.
Hans Scharoun
Visionary organic architect who joined the circle in 1919, contributing radical architectural watercolors and participating in the secret 'Glass Chain' correspondence.
Fun Facts
Modeled directly on the revolutionary 'Workers' and Soldiers' Councils' (Soviets) formed during the November 1918 German Revolution, the Arbeitsrat für Kunst ('Workers' Council for Art') demanded the immediate abolition of all aristocratic art privileges and the dissolution of the Prussian Academy of Arts.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
When Walter Gropius founded the famous Bauhaus in Weimar in April 1919, his iconic opening manifesto - calling for a new structure of the future where architecture, sculpture, and painting rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like a crystal symbol - was directly adapted from his leadership activities and texts for the Arbeitsrat für Kunst.
↗ Source: moma.org
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