Bayer was born in Austria but studied in Germany, where he is rightfully associated with the Bauhaus. But his life is much more complex than that. Moma writes: Artistic polymath Herbert Bayer was one of the Bauhaus’s most influential students, teachers, and proponents, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Bayer began his studies as an architect in 1919 in Darmstadt. From 1921 to 1923 he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, studying mural painting with Vasily Kandinsky and typography, creating the Universal alphabet, a typeface consisting of only lowercase letters that would become the signature font of the Bauhaus. Bayer returned to the Bauhaus from 1925 to 1928 (moving in 1926 to Dessau, its second location), working as a teacher of advertising, design, and typography, integrating photographs into graphic compositions. He began making his own photographs in 1928, after leaving the Bauhaus; however, in his years as a teacher the school was a fertile ground for the New Vision photography passionately promoted by his close colleague László Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy’s students, and his Bauhaus publication Malerei, Photographie, Film (Painting, photography, film). Most of Bayer’s photographs come from the decade 1928–38, when he was based in Berlin working as a commercial artist. They represent his broad approach to art, including graphic views of architecture (MoMA 1612.2001) and carefully crafted montages (MoMA 1611.2001). In 1938 Bayer emigrated to the United States with an invitation from Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, to apply his theories of display to the installation of the exhibition Bauhaus: 1919–28 (1938) at MoMA. Bayer developed this role through close collaboration with Edward Steichen, head of the young Department of Photography, designing the show Road to Victory (1942), which would set the course for Steichen’s influential approach to photography exhibition. Bayer remained in America working as a graphic designer for the remainder of his career.

This Moma account glosses over certain questionable aspects of Bayer’s life including his work for the ad agency Dorland (which had Nazis as clients during this time) in Berlin during the Nazi regime (1933-1938), and his love affair with Ise Gropius, now made famous by Ellen Lupton’s excellent book (Herbert Bayer: Inspiration and Process in Design) and exhibition on Bayer. The MoMA biography also blends out Bayer’s long work relationship with Walter Paepcke and the CCA in Chicago, and his young protégé Ralph Eckerstrom.