WSJ Portrait Art -- Walter Gropius

Another weekly look at the architect series I produced for Reader's Digest while I was working my day job creating that WSJ portrait art which became so iconic within the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I took my time crafting these, really getting involved in the hedcut technique I was developing. So, here's a detail to get you up close to the drawing...Although he produced a large body of work as an architect, Walter Gropius is perhaps best remembered as the founder of the Bauhaus Movement in Germany. His oeuvre reflects the desire to create designs driven by function, while maintaining aesthetic elegance.According to Wikipedia, "Gropius's career advanced in the postwar period. Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to hisBelgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty that included Paul Klee,Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy,Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky. One example product of theBauhaus was the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920."After moving to the U.S. in the late 1930's, he built his family residence in Lincoln, Massachusetts, causing a sensation. Here is a small picture of the facade... And here the the drawing in its entirety...