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Wikipedia entry
Introduction
Walter Peterhans (12 June 1897 – 12 April 1960) was a German photographer best known as a teacher and course leader of photography at the Bauhaus from 1929 until 1933, and at the Reimann School in Berlin under Hugo Häring. In the 1930s Peterhans was a proponent of the Neues Sehen (New Vision) movement, taking close-up, still-life photographs of everyday objects and images that played with unusual angles and lighting. At the Bauhaus, Peterhans' teaching involved using the theories of Kant, Plato and Pythagoras to show how beauty is constructed in the mind, and how it can be created in works of art. Peterhans immigrated to Chicago in 1938 to teach the 'visual training' course to architecture students at Illinois Institute of Technology under the direction of Mies van der Rohe. There were ten units to this course, to be followed over four semesters. The course was so successful, it survived Peterhans by over thirty years. In 1953 Peterhans was part of the founding core faculty at the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung, 1953–1968) in Germany, which became a renowned, influential design school. In the United States he was briefly married to American architect Gertrude Lempp Kerbis before he married Brigitte Schlaich, also an architect, in 1957. He died of an unexpected heart attack at the house of his in-laws in Stetten im Remstal, near Stuttgart, and is buried there. The Museum Folkwang in Essen owns the copyright for Peterhans.
Wikidata
Q68409
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Getty record
Introduction
From 1925 to 1926, Walter Peterhans studied photographic reproduction techniques at the Leipzig's State Academy of Printing and Graphic Art and earned a master's degree in photography at Weimar in 1926. Peterhans established and directed the department of photography at the Dessau Bauhaus and at Mies van der Rohe's Bauhaus Institute in Berlin from 1929 to 1933. In 1938, Peterhans abandoned photography and emigrated to the United States. From 1938 until his death in 1960, Peterhans taught art history and visual awareness courses as a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Born 12 June 1897; died 12 April 1960. From 1927 to 1929, Peterhans operated a freelance photographic studio specializing in industrial and portrait photography in Berlin, Germany. From 1929 to 1932, Peterhans was the head of the Photography Department at the Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany. From 1932 to 1933, he was the head of the Photography Department at the private Bauhaus school in Berlin opened by Mies van der Rohe. From 1935 to 1938, Peterhans worked as a freelance industrial and commercial photographer in Berlin, Germany. In 1938, Peterhans stopped practising photography. Peterhans emigrated to the United States in 1938 and worked as a professor of Visual Training, Analysis and History of Art at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, until his death in 1960. German-born photographer and teacher of design.
Nationalities
American, German
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Professor, Art Historian, Teacher, Photographer
Names
Walter Peterhans, Walter A. Peterhans
Ulan
500124356
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Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

3 works online

Exhibitions

Publications

  • Photography at MoMA: 1920 to 1960 Edited by Quentin Bajac, Lucy Gallun, Roxana Marcoci, and Sarah Hermanson Meister, 2016 Hardcover, 416 pages
  • Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops in Modernity Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, 2009 Exhibition catalogue, Hardcover, 344 pages
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