Marcel Breuer’s pivotal design was a watershed moment in the birth of modernism.
One of the most remarkable aspects of modern design is just how groundbreaking they were, especially relative to the popular aesthetic of its time. Case in point: the Wassily chair designed by Bauhaus pioneer, Marcel Breuer, in 1925 and considered today to be an icon of the modernist furniture movement. At a time when homes were mostly colonial, Greek revival or English in style and filled with the vestiges of Victorian furniture, the steel tube and leather chair was aggressively different and defiant.
Inspired by the bicycle frame and later named after friend and fellow Bauhaus School instructor Wassily Kandinsky (for whom Breuer created a duplicate of his prototype for his home), Breuer’s chair is a study in constructivist theory—that is, that we learn by building upon our existing foundation. Breuer attempted to take the classic club chair and reduce it to its simplest form. Additionally guided by the De Stijl movement, which emphasized vertical and horizontal geometry, this left Breuer to expose the chair’s elemental lines and key planes.
Breuer, a master carpenter at the Bauhaus, aimed to exemplify the movement’s unification of art and industry with his creation—and he did—quite possibly forever changing the trajectory of furniture design to come.
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