L2M3
Original Bauhaus, Woman with Mask, Bauhaus-archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin
2019
23 x 33 in. (59 x 84 cm)
Condition: Excellent
In 2019, The Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus with an exhibition of 1000 objects produced at the legendary German design school or inspired by the Bauhaus legacy.
German agency L2M3, founded by Sascha Lobe in 1999, produced a series of posters for this "Original Bauhaus" exhibition, along with the rest of the advertising for the centennial celebrations. In 2014, in anticipation of the anniversary, L2M3 created an exciting new corporate identity for the Bauhaus Archiv, including the new typeface seen in this poster. Called Bayer Next, the striking and playful typeface pays homage to the typeface most closely associated with the Bauhaus – Herbert Bayer’s Universal alphabet from 1925.
The exhibition posters all feature classic Bauhaus images under- and overlayed with the Bayer Next text. The image here is a well-known but mysterious photograph of a unidentified woman sitting in a tubular-steel chair designed by Bauhaus master Marcel Breuer. Bauhaus theater director Oskar Schlemmer designed her futuristic mask. The enigmatic photograph, taken around 1926, was used at the time in Bauhaus marketing materials.
