The African ChairThe African Chair was created by Marcel Breuer with weaver Gunta Stölzl. African Chair was the first work by Marcel Breuer. The African Chair (1921) was found again about 80 years later in year 2004, and is now on show at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin until 24th October.
The African Chair similar to a throne, is an unequalled document of conceptual universe of the early Bauhaus. The only document proving its existence was a black-and-white photograph of the time. It was made of painted wood with a colourful textile oak weave. The seat and back of the chair employs a woven textile. There is no information is available on the originally intended use of the chair. It may have been designed as a “throne” for the Bauhaus director, or perhaps is embodied the concept, so dear to Gropius, of architecture as a synthesis of all the arts.
Another convincing hypothesis is that this chair was intended symbolically for a marriage ceremony, with reference to relationship between Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl
Bauhaus Archive can now present this precious document, accompanied by the project of a film by Marcel Breuer shot in 1926 and telling the story of the Bauhaus, form the African Chair to tubular metal furniture.
Marcel Breuer (1902-1981)
Marcel Breuer was born in Hungary and trained at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany is heralded as having produced the first tubular steel armchair, his pieces pioneering the demand for tubular steel furniture throughout the 1920 and 1930. These pieces, along with his innovative laminated wood furniture and his unique architectural interpretation of light and space yielded a great deal of international respect and inspired the work of wide range of designers. Breuer is seen as one of the forefathers of the energetic aesthetic of uninhibited experimentation, combined with a high standard of artistry that the design industry enjoyed throughout the second half of the century.
Marcel Breuer studied under Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus from 1920-1924. During his student years he designed furniture for the Bauhaus model house, and creted pieces like the hand-carved “African” throne. Although whimsical and formally a distant relative to his later work, the chair initiated the technique of taut, minimal up holstery that would become one of his trademarks touches. He also designed a solid, blocky armchair for the Sommerfield House in 1921. This pieces exhibit a starkly different method of achievig comfort than his later streamlined, even clinical, pieces. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, Marcel Breuer designed furniture for the new campus and became head of the furniture workshop where he held this position until 1928. Also in 1925, Breuer created the famous tubular steel "Wassily" chair, purportedly inspired both by constructivist aesthetics and by the handlebars of his new bike. This piece, made for Wassily Kandinsky's space in Dessau, and referred to by the Bauhaus designers as "the abstract chair," made the user look as though they were floating on the upholstered seat within the steel cube frame. The chair was innovative in that it was extremely light, and was built entirely from ready-made tubes that were welded together. Several different companies sold the piece until it was picked up by Knoll.
In 1928 he started a private practice in Berlin and came out with his "Cesca" cantilever chair and stool, named after his daughter and probably inspired by Mies Van der Rohe. He worked with other cantilever designs, exhibiting one of the few couches made in this style at a 1930 show in Berlin. In 1935 Breuer, for the English company Isokon, produced a laminated wood chaise lounge and chair that, although innovative in the way they mimicked the human form, were never made as sturdily as his steel pieces. A 1936 molded plywood chair he made inspired the work of the Eames a decade later and his nested tables revisited the form of some he produced earlier in steel. In 1937 he moved to America and worked as an architect with Gropius in Massachusetts. From 1937-1947 he taught architecture at Harvard, and was commissioned by his former student Eliot Noyes to design buildings for IBM. In 1946 he started his own office in New York City and over the next decade or so, designed and furnished over seventy remarkably similar private houses and college dormitories, for Bryn Mawr and Vassar, in and around New England.
