8 2 9 1 r e u e r B l e c r a M
Marcel Breuer Design and Architecture
A Vitra Design Museum Travelling Exhibition
Considered the “inventor” of tubular steel furniture, the designer and architect Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) is one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. Born and raised in Hungary, he studied at the Bauhaus where he went on to head the furniture workshop from 1925 to 1928. During this period, he produced numerous tubular steel furniture pieces, including the legendary Wassily club chair that brought him international renown. With his furniture in aluminum and molded plywood in the 1930s, he continued to make design history until immigrating to the USA in 1937. First working as a professor at Harvard University, Breuer began a second, highly successful career as an architect. Owing a great deal to modernism, his buildings – primarily single-family homes, university and office buildings as well as museums – were internationally recognized in the 1950s and 1960s for their exemplary character. The retrospective produced by the Vitra Design Museum pays tribute to Breuer’s well-known contributions to 20th century design history. Yet it also brings renewed attention to his architectural works, which have fallen somewhat into oblivion in the past decades. In so doing, it is the first exhibition to give proper attention to both areas of Marcel Breuer’s work.
Marcel Breuer
Design and Architecture
He was an artist. He was the best teacher I ever had. All the others were Bauhaus ideologues. Philip Johnson on Marcel Breuer
A Vitra Design Museum Travelling Exhibition
s t n e t n o C
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Introduction Concept Curator Consultants Objects / Installation Catalogue Accompanying sales products Contacts
Club armchair; first version Standard-Möbel 1927
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1964-66
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Canteen Bauhaus Dessau 1926; stools and tables by Breuer
t p e c n o C . 2
The Vitra Design Museum possesses one of the most extensive and comprehensive collections of Marcel Breuer’s furniture designs worldwide. In addition, the Museum owns the archive of Anton Lorenz, a long-time business partner of Breuer who assembled an outstanding collection of original documents on the history of tubular steel furniture that includes important source material on the evolution of Breuer’s furniture designs. Therefore, the Vitra collection and archive offer a solid foundation for a comprehensive retrospective of the work of this innovative master. Several American institutions (Archives of American Art in Washington, Syracuse University Library in Syracuse, N.Y., MoMA and the Whitney Museum in New York City) and previous co-workers of Breuer have been consulted for the research and presentation of his work in the USA. With its retrospective on the work of Marcel Breuer, the Vitra Design Museum will focus on his seminal contribution to the development of furniture and interior design in the twentieth century. At the same time, the exhibition provides an opportunity to reintroduce Breuer’s longneglected architectural oeuvre to the public and to reassess its place in modern architecture. A pivotal contribution of this Bauhaus master to the history of design – and one that can be designated without exaggeration as revolutionary – was the “invention” of tubular steel furniture. A presentation of the incremental development and perfection of Breuer’s tubular steel furniture within the mere time of five years is, therefore, one of the main aims of the exhibition. Of hardly less import, from today’s perspective, are Breuer’s designs for aluminum and wood laminates from the thirties, which also represent ground-breaking innovations. They will receive deserved attention, as well as the legendary interiors by Breuer during his early days at the Bauhaus. Examples that had a significant influence upon twentieth century domestic culture include the interior of the master house for Walter Gropius in Dessau and the home of the famous theatre director Erwin Piscator in Berlin. Within the context of furniture design, the exhibition will explore the periodically intensive and consequential relationship between Breuer and Alvar Aalto. Breuer’s design work will be documented with a large number of original furniture pieces, as well as drawings and photographs.
Table B 12, 1928
Isokon long chair, 1935/36
Armchair, 1922
Set of nesting tables B9, 1925/26
Isokon side chairs and table, 1936/37
Shelve, 1930
Reclining Chair, 1932/34
Chair B33, 1927/8
Club armchair, version Thonet B3, 1930/31
Lounge chair, 1932/33
Armchair B34, 1928
Side table B 12, 1928
Isokon nesting tables, 1936
Thonet stool B 8, 1930
Chair and desk; dormitory rhoads Hall, Bryn Mawr College, 1938
Stool B9, 1925/26
Armchair B64, 1928
Catalogue of Thonet tubular steel furniture, 1930
B35 Lounge chair, 1928/29
Thonet poster, 1931
Dining room, Piscator apartment, Berlin 1927
Wohnbedarf store, Zurich 1932/33
In contrast to many other designers who have worked more or less simultaneously in the areas of architecture and design, Breuer’s work in these two fields falls into relatively distinct time periods. The most important part of his design career was already completed when his activity as an architect began in earnest. The few furniture pieces designed after 1945 did not achieve the same success as the models from the 1920s and ‘30s. Yet even in the case of Breuer, it would be erroneous to consider his buildings and furnishings completely independent from one another. The exhibition will strive to delineate the many parallels between these spheres of his creative work, for example, in the emphasis on construction, in the interaction of individual components, or in the attention to detail. The exhibition provides the opportunity to re-evaluate Breuer’s architectural oeuvre. While it was held in disregard during the postmodern period, such an assessment is fully unjustified. In contrast to his one-time teacher and mentor, Walter Gropius, Breuer was not a stalwart advocate of an ossified and dogmatic Moderne creed. Rather, his work bears witness to the creative evolution of modern design principles. Breuer was one of the first architects to use highly textured materials such as wood and untreated stone, which have become main characteristics of regionally influenced design in the postwar era. The expressive forms of his large-scale projects, in particular, are both powerful and original. His sculptural buildings with molded facades demonstrate a masterful application of the effects of light and shadow, and stand up to a comparison with Le Corbusier’s contemporary work. Finally, Breuer’s influence on the development of the single-family home can hardly be overestimated. With his own residences, with the model home presented in the garden of the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1949, and with villas constructed in Switzerland, Breuer repeatedly achieved exemplary solutions and provided new impulses for one of the twentieth century’s prominent building types. Breuer’s extensive architectural work will be documented in the exhibition with drawings, floor plans, photographs, models and video projections. Due to the fact that only a few projects can be described in detail, additional buildings will be presented with the aid of interactive computer terminals.
Entrance Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, 1964-66
Breuer I House in Lincoln (Massachusetts), 1938/39
Pack House in Scarsdale (New York), 1950-51
Apartment houses Doldertal in Zurich (with Alfred and Emil Roth), 1934
Single family house, originally planed for an exhibition in the MoMA garden, 1948/49
Courtyard of Pack House
UNESCO Headquaters in Paris (with B. Nervi and B. Zehrfuss), 1952-58
IBM Research Center in La Gaude (France), 1960-62
Hooper II House in Baltimore County (Maryland), 1956-59
Church at Saint John’s Abbey and University Complex in Collegeville (Minnesota), 1954-68
Atlanta Central Public Library in Atlanta (Georgia), 1977-80
s t n a t l u s n o C . 4 + r o t a r u C . 3
Curator Mathias Remmele works as a publicist, curator and docent. He writes for scholarly journals and national daily newspapers (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Bauwelt, Archithese, Design Report, Form) as an architecture and design critic. Remmele organised the retrospective exhibition on Verner Panton in 1999/2000 for the Vitra Design Museum and edited the accompanying catalogue entitled “Verner Panton – The Complete Oeuvre.” Since 2000, he is a lecturer at the University of Art and Design in Basle, Switzerland. Consultans Barry Bergdoll teaches art history at Columbia University in New York. In 2001, he co-curated the MoMA (NYC) exhibition on Mies van der Rohe. He is presently working on a book about the architecture of Marcel Breuer. Joachim Driller is an art historian who teaches in the Department of Architecture at the University of Wuppertal. He has published a highly regarded monograph on Marcel Breuer’s single-family houses. Ulrich Fiedler, is a gallery owner in cologne and expert in Bauhaus furniture and objects. Isabelle Hyman teaches art and architectural history at New York University. She published the first comprehensive monograph on the Marcel Breuer’s architectural oeuvre in 2001. Otakar Màcˇel is an art historian and teaches at the Technical University in Delft. With numerous publications he has established a reputation as an expert on tubular steel furniture. Alexander von Vegesack, collector and founding Director of the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and Berlin. Author of “Deutsche Stahlrohrmöbel”, “Das Thonet Buch” and various publications on tubular steel furniture.
s t c u d o r p s e l a S . 7 + e u g o l a t a C . 6 + n o i t a l l a t s n I / s t c e j b O . 5
Furniture (approx. 60-70) Photos (approx. 150-200) Books, brochures, detail catalogues (approx. 25) Drawings (approx. 25) Architectural models (approx. 8-10) Interactive computer terminals (approx. 6) Video projections (approx. 2) Exhibition floor space: approx. 600 – 1000 square meters Transport volume: approx. Four 40-feet high-cube containers (prospective estimate)
Catalogue Marcel Breuer - Design and Architecture Edited by Alexander von Vegesack and Mathias Remmele Approx. 300 pages with numerous illustrations In addition to essays by Barry Bergdoll, Joachim Driller, Isabelle Hyman, Otakar Màcˇel, Mathias Remmele and others, the catalogue includes texts by Marcel Breuer and personal accounts by his contemporaries. Also projected is a catalogue raisonné of Marcel Breuer’s furniture designs.
Accompanying sales products The Vitra Design Museum will offer an assortment of exhibition-related retail products to partner venues.
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Questions about the exhibition concept or content should be directed to: Vitra Design Museum Mathias Remmele Guest curator Charles-Eames Strasse 1 D-79576 Weil am Rhein
[email protected] Tel. +49 (0)7621 702 3728, Fax. +49 (0)7621 702 4728
For booking arrangements or questions regarding the exhibition itinerary, please contact : Vitra Design Museum Reiner Packeiser Head of Exhibition Department Charles-Eames-Strasse 1 D-79576 Weil am Rhein
[email protected] Tel. +49(0)7621 702 3729, Fax. +49 (0)7621 702 4729
