Marcel Breuer – König der Röhrenmöbel

Marcel Breuer (1902-1981)
For insiders and admirers primarily design 20 to 30 of the 20th century it makes no sense pose the designer of the famous bentwood furniture.
Marcel Breuer is one of the world’s greatest legends of 20th century design.
Like Halabala also Breuer was among the biggest pioneers in furniture design in identifying unusual functionalist solutions, but is most famous for being one of the first who began producing tubular steel furniture

His full name is Marcel Lajos Breuer and was born and lived in Pécs, Hungary, far from the centers of the art world as it was at that time in Paris, London or New York. Originally, he decided to become a painter and studied art. He went to Vienna, where he learned about the newly founded Bauhaus design school in Weimar.

Bauhaus sought artistically talented young people from all over the world, regardless of their previous experience, nationality, religion or gender. Which was perfect for a young Jewish man from a remote corner of Hungary.
In 1919 Breuer came to the Bauhaus.Thus, in the year of its creation. Director Walter Gropius soon found in Breuer great talent and directed by Marcel Breuer to design furniture.

The first significant engagement Marcel Breuer related to its supreme position in the construction and textile chain. A major turning point in his work, however, occurred in the period after 1928, when Breuer started experimenting in designing furniture with bent metal pipes. Initially it had inspired bent handlebars of his bicycle brand Adler, as well as chairs made Dutchman Mart Stam.

Proposals of Marcel Breuer gave birth to _ collection of furniture from bent metal tubes. And so began the Bauhaus’s vision of mass production of standardized pieces of furniture – not just chairs and stools, as well as tables, tables and beds. Furniture had a small weight was hygienic, flexible, yet stable without requiring the use in the manufacture of complex mechanisms.
Thanks to the famous Wassily chairs B3 from 1925, Marcel Breuer enrolled in design history.
These chairs were named after the painter Wassily Kandinsky,
Subsequently, Marcel Breuer designed the other seven chairs and tables, and three years later he wrote: “There are few simple indicators. Therefore, if the good furniture, multipurpose and can be changed. This avoids the complexity of our requirements to our daily lives more complicate than simplify. “

Breuer eventually founded his own company for the production of bentwood furniture whose production rights sold to Thonet company. Meanwhile, he could design and produce the most successful chair of the 20th century, based on the principle of the cantilever beam, which was originally identified only as B32, but since 1960, was named by Breuer’s daughter Francesca and the designation “Cesca”. Like many other pieces of furniture designed by him are still manufactured today.

Even during his long stay in Switzerland (1932-1934) and London (1935-1937) Breuer was devoted design furniture, but later design activities ended.

Since 1937, Marcel Breuer has resided in the United States, where he met his mentor Gropius. He designed many prominent buildings, usually quite strong and dynamic character. Such as The building is the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, The Department store in Rotterdam, IBM Research Center in La Gaude, France, and in terms of architectural history major main building, “Whitney Museum of American Art” in New York which was completed in 1966.

Marcel Lajos Breuer died in 1981 as one of the leading architects of the 20th century and its influence on the work of art and furniture design of the 20th century is still with us.