Known as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, stressing the combination of art and technology, and eventually became the head of the school's cabinet-making shop. He later practiced in Berlin, designing houses and commercial spaces, as well as a number of tubular metal furniture pieces, replicas of which are still in production today.
Perhaps the most widely-recognized of Breuer's early designs was the first bent tubular steel chair, later known as the Wassily Chair (pronounced vah-suh-lee), designed in 1925 and was inspired, in part, by the curved tubular steel handlebars on Breuer's Adler bicycle. Despite the widespread popular belief that the chair was designed for painter Wassily Kandinsky, Breuer's colleague on the Bauhaus faculty, it was not; Kandinsky admired Breuer's finished chair design, and only then did Breuer make an additional copy for Kandinsky's use in his home. When the chair was re-released in the 1960s, it was designated "Wassily" by it's Italian manufacturer, who had learned that Kandinsky had been the recipient of one of the earliest post-prototype units. Our modern reproductions of Marcel Breuer's furniture are a tribute to Marcel Breuer's beautiful and timeless designs.
|
|
