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Marcel Lajos Breuer 1902 - 1981 Born in Pécs, Hungary in 1902. As with so many of the great modernist furniture designers Breuer was also an architect, but unlike so many of them he actually started out as a furniture designer. One of the greatest architects and furniture designers of the 20th century, his name is today synonymous with the fundamental principles of the Bauhaus. After a brief period at teh Academy of Fine Art in Vienna Breuer enrolled at teh Bauhaus School in 1920. The Bauhaus was a German school of design where modern principles, technologies and the application of new materials were developed and applied in both the industrial and fine arts. Inspired by these new ideas, Breuer developed his own, 'International Style' of work - one of his best kwown designs from this period is the Wassily Chair. For several years in the early 1920's he worked primarily in wood; influenced by Dutch designers Gerrit Rietveld and Theo van Doesburg and by Avant-Garde constructivism, he designed furniture that explored the relationship between abstract forms and the materials in which he was working. From 1925 to 1928 he was employed as a head of the Bauhaus Furniture Workshop. It was during this period that he began designing in tubular steel. He was responsible for designing the furniture for the new Bauhaus school when they moved from Wiemar to Dessau in 1925, and it was then that he designed the B3. Inspired the shape and form of bicycle handlebars he designed steel club armchair - later renamed the 'Wassily Chair No B3', (named for fellow Bauhaus teacher, Wassily Kandinsky). The frame of the chair was made from lengths of nickled tubular steel, bent, chrome plated and polished. Flat, black planes of fabric, (now made in leather) stretched between chromed tubular steel members, form the seat, back rest and arms.. it almost resembles a piece of constructivist sculpture. A striking modernist representation of a classic club chair. He expected this piece to bring him critism, but - in his own words: "I thought that this out of all my work would earn me the most criticism, but the opposite of what I expected came true." A few years later in 1928 Breuer was to leave the Bauhaus, for even this most vital, and creative of environments was he felt too prone to over intellectualization. He said that he just wanted to design "without having to philosophize before every move". First he moved to Berlin to practice architecture, but worked principally on interiors and furniture. His first real architectural project came in 1932 - The Harnischmacher House in Wiesbaden. From 1932 to 1934 he lived primarily in Switzerland, producing furniture designs for Wohnbedarf in Zurich. Then in 1935 with the help of his friend Walter Gropius moved to Britain, where he was introduced to Jack Pritchard, founder of Isokon Furniture Company, a manufacturer of modernist designs. He produced five designs for Isokon including the Long Chair of 1935-36, made from plywood and based on one of his earlier aluminum chair designs. There was also a discernible influence from the organic plywood designs of Alvar Aalto, whose work was becoming more widely known at the at time. He also worked in an architectural partnership with the British Modernisht F. R. S Yorke. Very briefly Breuer became the Isokon 'Controler of design' in 1937, before moving to the US. Employed on the architectural staff at Harvard University, he was once again working with Walter Gropius. Together they established a joint architectural practice in Cambridge Massachussets which lasted until 1941. During these years he continued to design furniture, including a commision for Bryn Mawr College in 1938 and the Pennsylvania Pavilion at the NY world fair in 1939, and the International Competition for Low Cost Design at the Museum of Modern Art NY in 1948. During the 1950's his architectural practice flourished leading to the formation of Marcel Breuer Associates in 1957, which won a number of important commissions including the Whitney Museum of American Art NY 1963-66. |
Modern Furniture Designers
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