Bauhaus – Networking Ideas and Practice (BAUNET)

The exhibition Bauhaus – Networking Ideas and Practice (BAUNET) presents the work of artists, architects and designers from Croatia and the region who studied at the Bauhaus, the most influential international art school: Otti Berger, Ivana Tomljenović and Gustav Bohutinsky from Croatia, Avgust Černigoj from Slovenia, and Selman Selmanagić from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apart from the students' works, the works of their teachers, renowned artists who lectured and led workshops at the Bauhaus, are also presented: Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Oskar Schlemmer. The exhibition also includes the concepts and educational methods of the school.

As the exhibition covers the period from 1919 (the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar) to 1961 (the erection of the Berlin Wall), it also traces and presents the influences of the Bauhaus on post-war contemporary art, design and architecture, with a special focus on the Zagreb EXAT 51 group, the architecture practice of the Bauhaus student Hubert Hoffmann in Graz, and the B Course in Ljubljana.

The exhibition consists of more than 300 works in different media—from paintings, prints, drawings, objects, architecture blueprints and models, to textiles and furniture, photography and film, gathered for the occasion from Croatian and international museum collections: the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Arts and Crafts and Zagreb City Museum, all in Zagreb; Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Karl Peter Röhl Stiftung, Weimar, Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln, the Slovenian Theatre Institute, Ljubljana, the Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana, the Avgust Černigoj Gallery Lipica, and the National Museum, Belgrade.

Works from private collections are also included: the Private Archive of Selman Selmanagić, Berlin, the Daimler Art Collection, Berlin, the Private Archive of Gustav Bohutinsky, Zagreb, while the Marie-Luise Betlheim Collection, Zagreb is given special focus and exhibited in its entirety.

The curator of the exhibition is Vesna Meštrić, Senior Curator at the MSU and Coordinator of the BAUNET project, while the attractively designed exhibition display is conceived by Vladimir Končar, Studio Revolucija, Zagreb, author of the visual identity and website of the BAUNET project.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive, richly illustrated catalogue in Croatian and English, edited by Jadranka Vinterhalter, published by MSU Zagreb, featuring 26 articles written by Croatian and international experts in avant-garde and modern art, who are participants in the BAUNET project: Aida Abadžić Hodžić, Dubravko Bačić, Éva Bajkay, Regina Bittner, Iva Ceraj, Zrinka Ivković, Tvrtko Jakovina, Jasna Jakšić, Nataša Jakšić, Andrea Klobučar, Peter Krečič, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić, Vesna Meštrić, Antonija Mlikota, Maroje Mrduljaš, Ana Ofak, Peter Peer, Bojana Pejić, Michael Siebenbrodt, Barbara Sterle Vurnik, Karin Šerman, Darko Šimičić, Jadranka Vinterhalter, Bogo Župančič, and Isabel Wünsche.

Exhibition Curator: Vesna Meštrić