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Farewell Dinner for Walter Gropius

  • Friends and colleagues came together on 9 March 1937 to send off the architect Walter Gropius and his wife Ise Gropius, who had decided to leave for the United States.
  • Farewell Dinner for Walter Gropius

    Word Count: 5

  • Dinner
  • 09-03-1937
  • 09-03-1937
  • Friends and colleagues came together on 9 March 1937 to send off the architect Walter Gropius and his wife Ise Gropius, who had decided to leave for the United States.

    Word Count: 28

  • Friends and colleagues came together on 9 March 1937 to send off Walter Gropius and his wife Ise Gropius, who had decided to leave Britain for the United States. The couple had arrived in London in Otober 1934, at the invitation of Jack Pritchard, owner of the Isokon furniture company and Lawn Road Flats (also known as the Isokon Building), where the Gropiuses lived during their stay in London (Burke 2015, 50f.; Daybelge 2019, 165–171). It was expected that Gropius, together with the architect Maxwell Fry, would design a second Isokon building for Manchester (Daybelge/Englund 2019, 83f.). In addition, the art historian Herbert Read planned to publish a book on Gropius with Faber & Faber. Gropius tried to establish himself as a freelance architect, but was only able to realise a few projects, among them Wood House in Shipbourne, Kent, and a villa in Chelsea.  Other projects – such as the Manchester Isokon building – failed, as did his plans to establish an English Bauhaus (Daybelge/Englund 2019, 119). In 1937, he accepted a professorship at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in Cambridge/Mass.

    The farewell dinner, organised by Jack Pritchard and chaired by the biologist Julian Huxley, brought together many of the people Gropius had connected with during his stay in London and was held at the Trocadero Restaurant in Coventry Street on 9 March (Anker 2005, 9). It is likely that the Isobar, the restaurant at Lawn Road Flats, where Walter and Ise Gropius lived, had insufficient space to host the event. The Trocadero, meanwhile, was a more representative and well-known venue in London, with a history going back to the nineteenth century and having undergone redecoration in 1930 (http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/TrocaderoLeicesterSquareLondon.htm. Accessed 8 January 2021). The “Bill of Fare” menu was designed by László Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus artist who had also fled to London and was responsible for the Isokon brochures. The menu was printed by the Lund Humphries publishing house.

    The guest list of 135 shows that both local and émigré architects, artists and intellectuals were invited. Among the former were the architects Wells Coats, Maxwell Fry and art historian Herbert Read; the latter included artists and architects such as László Moholy-Nagy and Ernst L. Freud, as well as architecture historians Sigfried Giedion and Nikolaus Pevsner.
    The guest list reflects the multi-national nature of the artistic community in London at the time and features the names of many who subsequently departed the city. Of course, Gropius was under the first, moving to the United States, where he continued his architectural practice, taught at Harvard and became the ‘American Gropius.’ László Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago and became director of the New Bauhaus. Nikolaus Pevsner, however, remained, and spent several years working on his monumental study, The Buildings of England. The architect Ernst L. Freud, son of Sigmund Freud, also continued to live in London, where he designed residential buildings and was involved in planning housing for migrants.

    Word Count: 482

  • László Moholy-Nagy, Bill of Fare, farewell dinner menu for Walter Gropius, London, March 1937, front page (Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia, © László Moholy-Nagy).
  • László Moholy-Nagy, Bill of Fare, farewell dinner menu for Walter Gropius, London, March 1937 (Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia, © László Moholy-Nagy).
    László Moholy-Nagy, Bill of Fare, farewell dinner menu for Walter Gropius, London, March 1937, Alphabetical List of Guests (Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia, © László Moholy-Nagy).
    Portrait of Walter Gropius, London, c. 1937 (Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia). This photo was included in the Bill of Fare farewell dinner menu for Walter Gropius designed by László Moholy-Nagy.
  • Anker, Peder. The Bauhaus of Nature. Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

    Burke, David. The Lawn Road Flats. Spies, Writers and Artists. The Boydell Press, 2014.

    Daybelge, Leyla. “The Lawn Road Flats.” Insiders Outsiders. Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture, edited by Monica Bohm-Duchen, Lund Humphries, 2019, pp. 165–171.

    Daybelge, Leyla, and Magnus Englund. Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain. Pavilion Books, 2019.

    Powers, Alan. Bauhaus goes West. Modern Art and Design in Britain and America. Thames & Hudson, 2019.

    Word Count: 78

  • Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia.

    Word Count: 6

  • My deepest thanks go to Bridget Gillies from University of East Anglia Archive for supporting me with images from the Pritchard Papers.

    Word Count: 22

  • Burcu Dogramaci
  • Serge Chermayeff, Ernst L. Freud, Sigfried Giedion, Julian Huxley, László Moholy-Nagy, Nikolaus Pevsner, Herbert Read, Ise Gropius, Walter Gropius.

    Word Count: 20

  • Trocadero Restaurant, 13–15 Coventry Street, Piccadilly Circus, London W1.

  • London
  • No
  • Burcu Dogramaci. "Farewell Dinner for Walter Gropius." METROMOD Archive, 2021, https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/1470/object/5141-7555508, last modified: 27-04-2021.
  • László Moholy-Nagy
    PhotographerGraphic DesignerPainterSculptor
    London

    László Moholy-Nagy emigrated to London in 1935, where he worked in close contact with the local avantgarde and was commissioned for window display decoration, photo books, advertising and film work.

    Word Count: 30

    Julian Huxley
    ZoologistPhilosopherWriter
    London

    Julian Huxley was the director of London Zoo from 1935 to 1942 and worked closely with emigrant photographers, artists and architects, including Berthold Lubetkin, Erna Pinner and Wolf Suschitzky.

    Word Count: 27

    Herbert Read
    Art HistorianArt CriticPoet
    London

    The British art historian Herbert Read established himself as a central figure in the London artistic scene in the 1930s and was one of the outstanding supporters of exiled artists.

    Word Count: 30

    Visual Pleasures from Everyday Things
    Booklet
    London

    Visual Pleasures from Everyday Things is a booklet written in 1946 by the emigrated architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner with the aim of aesthetic education and teacher training.

    Word Count: 26

    Isokon Company
    Architecture and Furniture Company
    London

    The furniture design and architecture company Isokon was an important commissioner for emigrants such as Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Ernst Riess and Edith Tudor-Hart.

    Word Count: 27

    Faber & Faber
    Publishing House
    London

    Faber & Faber shows the importance of publishing houses as supporters of contemporary art movements and of the contribution of emigrants, helping to popularise their art and artistic theories.

    Word Count: 29