The Hiding Game by Naomi Wood

Bauhaus from a people’s perspective

I’ll never get to read all the books I know about already let alone those I’ve yet to discover – but it’s well worth a try when you get hold of a book like The Hiding Game. With my focus on building and developing Life: Full Colour, I’m naturally drawn to books that combine masterful storytelling and art. Most recently, there seems to have been a theme around the period between the wars in the 20th Century – fulfilled once more by watching an emotional film only last night: “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” (no spoilers here).

My first encounter with the Bauhaus movement was via Tom Wolfe’s “From Bauhaus to Our House”, which I read in my first year at Warwick University in 1984. His style of writing is from the perspective of a journalist; investigative, questioning and shining a light on what relevance the Bauhaus approach to art and design has to the rest of the 20th Century and beyond.  As a fledgling Art Historian at the time, I hadn’t really embraced the period in which all this artistic radicalism was taking place. Of course, it was the rise of Nazism, Hitler and the Third Reich – when anything ‘different’ was proscribed as subversive.

Reading Naomi Wood’s book brought The Bauhaus to life in terms of its place in history and the artists inextricably linked to it notably Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. From the peace and tranquility of my eyrie in 21st Century North Wales, it’s hard to imagine the daily fear, deprivation and horror people were experiencing in the 1930s. Through the great characterisation of Charlotte, Irmi, Walter, Jeno, Kasper and Paul, we learn the methods of the ateliers but most keenly the emotions, dilemmas and bad decisions made that would affect their lives so immeasurably.

It is true art to be able to bring an iconic, indeed UNESCO listed design movement to life with real characters from history interwoven with their very personal choices in life. Naomi Wood delivers this wholeheartedly.

5 Stars