Icon: Marcel Breuer

Marcel Lajos Breuer was born in the provincial city of Pecs, Hungary. His early study and teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s introduced him to three older giants of the era that had a life-long influence upon his professional career – Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier.

Breuer left the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin in 1928 and then moved to England in 1935 when the Nazis made it impossible for anyone who had been a part of the Bauhaus to practice architecture. In 1937, Breuer joined Walter Gropius in his architectural practice and also became a professor at Harvard. Breuer moved to New York in 1946 to found his own architectural firm, and like Le Corbusier, Breuer chose concrete as his medium of choice. He used concrete in his design of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City.

Marcel Breuer’s most recognized furniture design was the first bent tubular steel chair, known as the Wassily Chair. The Wassily Chair was designed in 1925 and inspired by the curved tubular steel handlebars on Breuer’s Adler bicycle. He designed his famous Wassily chair for painter Wassily Kandinsky, Breuer’s colleague on the Bauhaus faculty. Kandinsky admired Breuer’s finished chair design so much that did Breuer made an additional copy for Kandinsky to use in his home. When the Italian manuafcturer re-released the chair in the 1960s, they designated the name “Wassily” after they had learned that Kandinsky had been the recipient of one of the earliest post-prototype units.

Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) Biography

Link: Breuer Trailer House

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

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Books: Marcel Breuer: 1902-1981

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Books: Marcel Breuer: 1902-1981

Swiss Motif in a Japanese House