In 1992, the Partner and Creative Director at studio1500 Erik Schmitt attended the reunion of Black Mountain College in San Francisco. The school is credited with shaping some of the greatest artists in American history: Willem de Kooning, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg among them. Schmitt was invited because his two aunts and their family friend Ruth Asawa attended BMC. He took extensive notes that day and took photographs at the cocktail party after the event at Ruth Asawa’s home. Those quotes and photographs are the foundation of the book American Bauhaus.

The name of the book, American Bauhaus, was inspired by a quote Erik Schmitt recorded on the day of the reunion by Peter Oberlander who remembered Joseph Albers saying “Black Mountain is a minimal version of the Bauhaus … Go there.”

Edited and designed by Erik Schmitt

Published by Slanted Publishers, 2022

Softcover, 112 pages, b&w offset with spot color, 7 × 10 inches

ISBN: 978-3-94-844038-1