The Arts and Crafts Education of the Brücke: Expressions of Craft and Creativity

This article examines the formation of Brucke with respect to the burgeoning Arts and Crafts scene in Dresden in the early twentieth century. It explores the prevailing "craft ideology" of this period contra the practices of the academy, and chiefly attempts to analyze the ambivalent position of Brucke, in considering how it is possible to reconcile their strong sense of the heritage of the German woodcut and woodcarving tradition with their avant-garde creed of youth and creativity. This further leads into a discussion regarding the implications of the rhetorical use of the term Handwerk ("craft") by the former Bracke artists, as well as by some of the first critical interpreters of Expressionism during the early Weimar era, and concludes with a comparative study of Brucke and Bauhaus.