Artist 16: Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer was a Hungarian architect and furniture designer born in 1902.  Considered one of the masters of Modernism he was interested in modular construction and simple forms.  He studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, he was later appointed head of the school’s carpentry workshop.  After his time at Bauhaus he went on to designing homes and commercial spaces in Berlin.  Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Breuer created the design of tubular steel furniture and would later create innovative and experimental wooden furniture.  Due to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and Breuer being Jewish, he relocated to London, while there he worked for a company that can be credited as one of the earliest introducers to the modern designs in the United Kingdom.  While working for the Isokon Company he continued his furniture designs as well as home designs.  Once in the United States Breuer taught at Harvard’s Architecture School.  During his time teaching he also began designing homes with Walter Gropius, but dissolved the partnership in 1941 to establish his own firm.  While still in America, Breuer designed many homes under the modernist style.  In 1953 he was commissioned to design the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, at this time he returned to Europe and returned to larger nonresidential commissions.  It was at this point that Breuer began the use of concrete as his medium.  Many say that Breuer was able to make concrete look soft.  In the early 1960s he return to the United States to complete several large scale commissions including the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City.