Joost Schmidt
Germany (1893—1948)Schmidt began his artistic training in Weimar, but the outbreak of the First World War forced him to interrupt his studies until 1918. In 1919 he joined the Bauhaus, initially as a student, training in the stone and wood sculpture workshop under Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer. In 1921–22 he contributed carvings to the Sommerfeld House in Berlin and, in 1923, designed a poster for the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar. In 1925 Gropius appointed him a young master at the Bauhaus in Dessau. There he taught lettering in the preliminary course and, from 1928, directed both the sculpture workshop and the advertising, typography and printing workshop, with its affiliated photography department. He also designed publicity material for the city of Dessau and worked extensively as a typographer and graphic designer. In 1934 he collaborated with Gropius on the exhibition Deutsches Volk – Deutsche Arbeit in Berlin. After the war, he was appointed professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin, where he took charge of the preparatory course for architects.
