Arbeitsrat für Kunst

The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers' Council for Art) was founded in Berlin in November 1918, in the first weeks of the German Revolution, by the architect Bruno Taut and fellow artists and architects who modeled their organization on the workers' and soldiers' councils. Its program, published in 1919, demanded that art and architecture lead the social rebuilding of Germany - galleries for all, art integrated into communal building - and it organized exhibitions and agitational projects in the charged postwar years. Its vision ran to crystalline glass architecture, most famously in Taut's Alpine Architecture, and it overlapped with the Novembergruppe and the circle around the Bauhaus's founding; Taut's Gläserne Kette (Glass Chain) correspondence of 1919-20 spun from it. The council dissolved in 1921 as the revolutionary moment closed.

Defining characteristics

• Utopian crystalline glass architecture imagined at alpine scale
• Colorful, monumental wall programs proposed for civic buildings
• Art conceived as collective labor: exhibitions and programs organized council-style
• Expressionist angularity, domes, and glass surfaces signaling social renewal
• Fine art, craft, and architecture joined into a single rebuilding project

Key figures

• Bruno Taut (1880-1938) — Architect who founded the council and led its glass-architecture vision
• Walter Gropius (1883-1969) — Member whose Bauhaus grew from the same postwar debates
• Hans Scharoun (1893-1972) — Young architect-member later known for organic modernism
• Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) — Painter-printmaker among the council's artists; later a Bauhaus master

Example works

• Alpine Architecture — Bruno Taut (1919)
• Architekturprogramm des Arbeitsrats für Kunst — Arbeitsrat für Kunst (1919)

Sources

• Arbeitsrat für Kunst - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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