The Life of Walter Gropius

The concept for the Bauhaus - literally 'building house' - came from Walter Gropius, a practicing architect and one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. Young Gropius's idea for the Bauhaus emerged from his experience of the first world war in which he served as a cavalry officer on the western front. His response to the devastating scenes that he lived through was a stark determination to 'start again from zero.' Only a new outlook on design and architecture could provide the means for a shattered civilisation literally to rebuild itself. Gropius's vision was a democratic concept of art for the people: art for social betterment in which everyone would share.

The Bauhaus aesthetic meant clarity, sharp angles, and straight lines. It meant Kandinsky, Klee, Albers, and Moholy-Nagy as teachers and a playful, richly experimental communal life (and often outrageous parties). Gropius was at the very centre of this vibrant cultural life and a figure of great personal charisma and intellectual glamour. This book uncovers his riveting and often poignant personal story: his personal anguish and exile during the second world war, the death of his daughter, the disappearance of his sister, and the break-up of his marriage with Alma Mahler - as well as examining the urges that drove 20th Century modernism as a whole.

The centenary of the Bauhaus will be celebrated in 2019 and there could not be a better time for this glorious biography of its founder.