The famous Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer is precisely one of these, the first ever chair to feature a bent-steel frame. While it was first created in 1926, it marked the beginning of a new era in modern furniture with a design that maintains a progressive look even today.
A pioneer of the International Style in his use of steel and glass, Breuer's affinity for concrete later made him a key figure in the emergence of Brutalism, which has drawn criticism due to his designs' heavy-handed massiveness.
Marcel Breuer is famous for his tubular steel furniture, yet his real interest was architecture. For our Bauhaus 100 series, marking 100 years of the influential school, we profile the Hungarian designer who championed a rational approach to design.
In 1925, inspired by the design of bicycle handlebars, he invented the tubular metal chair; his original version is known as the Wassily chair. Marcel Breuer sitting in a Wassily chair, which he designed.
Breuer produced African Chair under the tutelage of Johannes Itten, the master of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop. The year after it was produced, the Bauhaus turned away from the expressionist aesthetic promoted by Itten and embraced a machine aesthetic.
Breuer was inspired by the shape and form of a bicycle handlebars when he created one of his most famous pieces, the Wassily Chair No B3 in 1925. It was designed and made for Wassily Kandinsky'. The frame of the chair was made from polished, bent, nickelled tubular steel, which later became chrome plated.
Marcel BreuerThe Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925–1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany.
Bauhaus was an influential art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The movement encouraged teachers and students to pursue their crafts together in design studios and workshops.
German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for a brewer of beer or ale, from Middle High German briuwer 'brewer'.
Brutalism was generally characterised by its rough, unfinished surfaces, unusual shapes, heavy-looking materials, straight lines, and small windows. Modular elements were often used to form masses representing specific functional zones, grouped into a unified whole.
Made of a tubular steel frame and cane rattan seat and backing, these chairs have been in homes for years. The Cesca chair was designed by Marcel Breuer in the late 1920s and is named for his daughter Francesca. His design has garnered such fame that one of the original chairs sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Breuer was impressed by his bicycle's strength and lightness, the result of its being made of tubular steel. This seemingly indestructible material could be bent into handlebar shapes and could easily support the weight of one or two riders; why then could it not be used for furniture?”