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This essential introduction explores Josef Hoffmann’s (Austrian, 1870–1956) key ideas, buildings, and designs to examine an essential modernist who continues to directly inform and inspire European aesthetics, from monochrome interior schemes to the cutlery we set on the table.
Hoffmann was a founding father of the Viennese Secession and Wiener Werkstätte, and revolutionized Western aesthetics with a brave new minimalism. As a trained architect, Hoffmann lived his life as an extreme aesthete, while also cultivating his image as a bon viveur, a lover of women, a snappy dresser, and a provocative thinker. Gifted with a questing intellect, he continually challenged received orthodoxies and pushed for purer design in buildings and furniture, glass and metalwork.
Hoffmann was a founding father of the Viennese Secession and Wiener Werkstätte, and revolutionized Western aesthetics with a brave new minimalism. As a trained architect, Hoffmann lived his life as an extreme aesthete, while also cultivating his image as a bon viveur, a lover of women, a snappy dresser, and a provocative thinker. Gifted with a questing intellect, he continually challenged received orthodoxies and pushed for purer design in buildings and furniture, glass and metalwork.
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