The way our environment looks, the appearance of everything from housing estates to newspapers, is partly the result of a school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and closed down by the Nazis in 1933. This was the Bauhaus, which has left an indelible mark on art education throughout the world.

Setting everything against a backdrop of the times, Frank Whitford traces the ideas behind its conception and describes its teaching methods. He examines the activities of the teachers - artists as eminent as Paul Klee and Kandinsky - and the daily lives of the students. Everything is described with the aid, wherever possible, of the words of those who were there at the time.