“There are more painters at the Bauhaus than you’d believe”. This statement by the Bauhaus student Ernst Kallai is underscored by some 370 paintings in our collection by the Bauhaus masters, such as Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer and Lothar Schreyer, and their students, such as Friedl Diecker, Werner Drewes, Albert Flocon, Fritz Kuhr, Xanti Schawinsky, Hans Thiemann and Fritz Winter. The Bauhaus successor institution, the New Bauhaus in Chicago, is represented with pieces by the instructors György Kepes and Serge Chermayeff.

The collection contains a diverse array of works spanning a broad spectrum of artistic styles: Expressionism, Constructivism and New Objectivity of the 1920s to abstract painting of post-war modernism. In addition to the predominantly non-figurative works, the collection contains numerous still lifes and portraits. The sculpture collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv features autonomous pieces by Josef Hartwig and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as various sculptures from the preliminary course and theatre workshop, as well as three-dimensional studies created at the New Bauhaus in Chicago.