You Need the Bauhaus

Grete Reichardt studied at the weavery workshop at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Like Gunta Stölzl, Anni Albers and Benita Koch-Otte she produced remarkable textiles. Her collage 'you need the bauhaus' from 1928 transports a critique towards the loss of experimental freedom in the weavery in favour of industrial productions. The constant ticking of the clock commands 'Tempo, Tempo' to create metres of textiles for the industry. Reichardt's concluding request is to prove where there is time left for free experimentation, which had been proclaimed by Walter Gropius as the basis to evolve into a perfect craftsman and hence into an artist: 'art and technique - a new unity'. In an exhibition of the students' work in the winter semester of 1928 this collage was most probably on show - the critique must have been obvious to both students and masters. Reichardt's collage is not an atypical work of the young weaver at the Bauhaus. In the 1970s she picked up on this topic and produced a number of textile collages.