The Life of Walter Gropius - Fiona MacCarthy

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. 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. 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.

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. The Bauhaus aesthetic meant clarity, sharp angles, and straight lines. 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.