Circles and squares for the Bauhaus's first show

In June 1922 the government of Thuringia urged the Bauhaus, the young school of art and design in Weimar, to show the work it had done so far. The answer was the school's first big exhibition, opened by its director Walter Gropius with a lecture on "art and technology, a new unity".

The poster came out of a competition. Joost Schmidt, then a student in the stone and wood sculpture workshop, built it as a cross of circles and squares set on the diagonal, with the Bauhaus logo designed by Oskar Schlemmer worked into it.

It was hung in 120 German railway stations. The first printing gave the dates as July to September, but the exhibition ran from 15 August to 30 September 1923, and the information was updated with a sticker. The copy shown here carries the new dates on a red band: "Eröffnung verschoben auf 15. Aug", opening postponed to 15 August.

Visitors also saw the Haus am Horn, a model house built for the exhibition with many Bauhaus members involved, and on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1996. Schmidt later taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau and ran its advertising, typography and printing workshop from 1928 to 1932. Under the Nazis he was soon prevented from working because of his Bauhaus past; after the war he became a professor at the art school in Berlin.