Bauhaus: Joost Schmidt

Joost Schmidt was a German painter, sculptor, typographer and graphic designer belonging to the German Bauhaus school in Weimar, an experimental university founded by Walter Gropius with ideas of balancing the opposites of craftsmanship and artistic creation. His work, especially in advertising, has exercised great influence in art and graphic design of the 20th century. From the years 1919 to 1925, Schmidt trained in workshops in stone and wood under the guidance of Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer. This allowed Joost to learn about a medium he had never previously worked in, extending his artistic capabilities.

During the year of 1921, Schmidt worked on two projects that would serve to be key milestones of his career - he designed carvings for the Sommerfield House in Berlin and devised posters for the Bauhaus exhibition that took place in Weimar during the year of 1923. This work gave Joost the opportunity to run the sculpture workshop and be head of the typographic department, however Schmidt refused this offer and decided to accept an offer from Walter Gropius himself, in which he became a Junior Master at the Bauhaus Dessau.
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To this day, it is argued that Schmidt is one of the most overlooked figures of the Bauhaus. This may be due to the fact that he tried to separate himself from the school's influence as the Nazis were rising to the political top of Germany, but what is often neglected is the fact that he contributed greatly to the legacy of Bauhaus after the war ended. Following the Nazi regime's downfall, Schmidt was appointed as a professor at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste (School of Art) in Berlin.