This piece incorporates two well-known elements from the Bauhaus school. First, the facial outline on the right side is based on the Bauhaus seal (shown below) designed by Oskar Schlemmer in 1922.
Second, in the preliminary course (which all students were required to take) Wassily Kandinsky taught that circles, triangles, and squares were the shapes that corresponed to the primary colors blue, yellow, and red. Many of the graphic designs produced by the school carry this tri-color/tri-geometry motif.
An interesting fact about this composition is that it was produced by 50 lines of hand-written PostScript (see below). This is consistent with another common element in the original Bauhaus designs: often items which appeared to be machine-made were actually laboriously crafted by hand.
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 %%BoundingBox: 70 140 530 720 %%EndComments %%EndProlog % % Bauhaus (c) Alejandro L. Garcia (1999) % 0.75 0.75 scale 120 180 translate % Write the letters BAUHAUS /Helvetica findfont 128 scalefont setfont 0.5 setgray 50 600 moveto (B) show 150 500 moveto (A) show 250 400 moveto (U) show 50 400 moveto (H) show 150 300 moveto (A) show 250 200 moveto (U) show 350 100 moveto (S) show % Draw the blue circles on the first line newpath 0 0 1 setrgbcolor 192 650 40 0 360 arc closepath fill 297 650 40 0 360 arc closepath fill 400 650 40 0 360 arc closepath fill % Draw the yellow triangles on the second line 1 1 0 setrgbcolor 50 505 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath 255 505 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath 360 505 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath fill % Draw the red squares on the third line; make the one second darker 1 0 0 setrgbcolor 155 410 moveto 75 0 rlineto 0 75 rlineto -75 0 rlineto closepath fill 0.8 0.1 0.1 setrgbcolor 362 410 moveto 75 0 rlineto 0 75 rlineto -75 0 rlineto closepath fill % Draw the rest of the triangles, squares and circles 1 1 0 setrgbcolor 50 305 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath 255 305 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath 360 305 moveto 40 80 rlineto 40 -80 rlineto closepath fill 1 0 0 setrgbcolor 55 210 moveto 75 0 rlineto 0 75 rlineto -75 0 rlineto closepath 155 210 moveto 75 0 rlineto 0 75 rlineto -75 0 rlineto closepath 362 210 moveto 75 0 rlineto 0 75 rlineto -75 0 rlineto closepath fill 0 0 1 setrgbcolor 93 145 40 0 360 arc closepath fill 192 145 40 0 360 arc closepath fill 297 145 40 0 360 arc closepath fill % Draw the profile silhouette 500 700 moveto 10 0 rlineto 0 -400 rlineto -10 0 rlineto closepath 0 -400 rmoveto -20 0 rlineto 0 -65 rlineto -15 0 rlineto 0 -10 rlineto 15 0 rlineto 0 -65 rlineto 20 0 rlineto closepath -20 -140 rmoveto -30 0 rlineto 0 -60 rlineto 30 0 rlineto closepath 0.5 setgray fill showpage %%EOF
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