Marcel Breuer: From Bauhaus Visionary to Furniture Design Icon

Portrait of Marcel Breuer

The Model B3 (commonly known as the Wassily chair), the Bauhaus stool and the cantilevered Cesca chair are among the great classics of modernism and have been copied and reinterpreted by countless designers ever since. Like many designers and architects working in Europe in the 1930s, he found himself fleeing Germany and relocating to the US, where he flourished. Breuer was a prolific architect and considered this his main calling – projects such as the monumental Saint John’s Abbey Church and the iconic Whitney Museum of American Art in New York are some of his best-known works. 

Breuer’s Bauhaus Beginnings: A New Vision for Design

The Bauhaus was an influential avant-garde school of design, architecture and applied arts that was founded in Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius. Gropius’s idea was to bridge the gap between craftsmanship and the fine arts, and the Bauhaus taught students both theory and applied crafts, so that they were capable of creating objects that were both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Disappointed by the more traditional design teaching in Vienna, Breuer joined the Bauhaus in 1920. He ended up in the carpentry workshop, which served him well throughout his career, and was recognised for his skills in sculpture and design by Gropius, who became his lifelong mentor. Breuer graduated and left for Paris to further his studies, but was eventually persuaded by Gropius to return and teach at the new Bauhaus in Dessau, where he was offered the position of master at the carpentry workshop.

Although Breuer worked alongside Abstract Expressionists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, he was a rationalist and believed in designing for functionality, and that modern technology and industry should be used to make everyday products for an industrial and scientific society. He became a proponent of standardisation, mass-production techniques and prefabrication. When the new Bauhaus buildings in Dessau were completed in 1926, Breuer fitted it out with tubular steel furniture, as well as the masters’ houses. Breuer’s dream, however, was to put his architectural designs into practice so in 1928, aged 26, he left to establish his own office in Berlin, supported by royalties from the sale of his chairs. 

Innovation in Furniture Design: The Birth of Iconic Pieces

Marcel Breuer – Pair of “Wassily” chairs, model B, and “Laccio” table, design 1925-1926. Coming to auction on 20 Jan 2025 via Setdart Auction House (Est: €2,200 EUR – €2,500 EUR).

When the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau in 1925, Breuer bought himself a bicycle that had chromium-plated, tubular steel handle bars. While he was learning to ride it, he realised that this type of tubular steel could be bent into continuous loops to form the supporting frame of chairs and tables.

The design of Model B3 – the first such chair – successfully brought together the industrially mass-produced tubular steel with traditional methods of craftsmanship – the fabric for the back and seat was woven in the textile department of the Bauhaus. The piece eventually became known as the Wassily chair because, it is said, a curious Wassily Kandinsky expressed an interest in a prototype in Breuer’s studio and was one of the first recipients of a post-prototype model for his own office. First mass-produced by Thonet, the licence for manufacturing the chair was picked up after the Second World War by the Italian firm Gavina, which was in turn bought out by the American company Knoll in 1968. The chair remains in production today.

The Cesca chair, which Breuer designed in 1928, is arguably his most popular creation. Soon after crafting the Wassily, he turned to the B32, or what later became known as the Cesca, named after his daughter Francesca. It is the first cantilevered chair in history – created by molding the tubular steel into a single form, onto which he attached two beechwood frames covered in caning. Gavina also produced the Cesca.

When Breuer moved to the UK in 1935, he worked with a London manufacturer, Jack Pritchard, who produced his bent plywood designs for the Isokon Company. One of the most famous of these designs – the Long Chair – is the reclining chair with elegant, organic lines. The way it was designed means that it spreads a person’s weight across a larger area than a regular chair, giving greater comfort. For its launch in 1936, Isokon promised that the chair will “give scientific relaxation to every part of the body, immediately creating a feeling of well-being”.

Marcel Breuer – Long Chair, probably for Isokon. Auction Passed (Est: €800 EUR – €1,200 EUR) via Venduehuis der Notarissen (December 2024).

Modernist Architecture: Breuer’s Architectural Masterpieces

Some two years later, Breuer moved to the United States to join Walter Gropius at Harvard University, where he taught architecture and introduced students to the International Style. From 1938 to 1941 he and Gropius collaborated on various architectural projects, with a specialism in light-frame wood houses. Although his preoccupations changed over the course of his career – from the lightness of the volumetric International Style to his later poured concrete monumental creations, Breuer’s interest always lay in creating new modes of expression, working with materials such as steel, glass and concrete and exploring new techniques such as steel-frame construction and prefabrication.

In 1946 he moved to New York, where he set up his own studio. Although he had worked mostly on smaller domestic buildings before the war, here his studio took on larger and more ambitious projects, such as the buildings for the Unesco headquarters in Paris. In 1954, Breuer was appointed to redesign Saint John’s Abbey Church and monastery in Minnesota. The monumental building uses cast-in-place concrete for its giant stems that support the ceiling and for the prominent bell tower in front of the church. The brutalist Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, built between 1964 and 1966, is one of his most iconic projects – an inverted ziggurat that is built from concrete, its largely blind facade clad in granite. It was a stark departure from the local vernacular of ornate brownstones and created much debate.

Breuer’s Enduring Influence: Modern Design and Legacy

Breuer’s influence on furniture and architectural design can be felt to this day. His chairs remain extremely popular and are still mass-produced. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Breuer should feel more lauded than most – copies of the Cesca chair, with only slight variations, are ubiquitous. The Cesca, wrote Elaine Louie in the New York Times, “costs $45 at The Door Store, $59 at The Workbench, $312 at Pallazetti or $813 at the Knoll store itself, and yet, to the average person, all the chairs look the same.” His work, whether architecture or design, expressed modernism’s faith in technology and the promise of a better future. Whether in the exploration of modern materials or contemporary architectural trends, he responded to modern life with vigor, vision and intelligence, leaving an indelible mark on our lived environment and our sense of what is possible.