Barcelona Pavilion Mies

Barcelona Pavilion Mies

Barcelona Pavilion Mies

Posted on: January 10, 2012 - 1:17 am
by Admin

With the deftness of a master artist bringing his canvas to life with a few broad brushstrokes, Breuer brought together a collection of steel and fabric that - at first sight - is the essence of austerity, but which manages to draw from its frugal base materials a stylishness that reaffirms the old adage “less is more”. Sporting the slightest of steel chrome-plated frames – inspired by the designer’s Adler bicycle – and upholstered in sparse layers of fabric that provide the seat and back-rest, the Wassily can lay claim to being the Modernist movement's most portable creation.

Bauhaus, Breuer & Kandinsky

It is thought those who claim the chair was conceived as the “Wassily” – the name deriving from Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky – are guilty of a slight anachronism. For – so the story goes – the chair only came to bear the eponym in the 1960s after Gavina, its then-Italian manufacturer, learnt that Breuer had fashioned one for fellow Bauhaus member Kandinsky, an admirer of the piece. Thereafter, the chair was universally referred to as the Wassily.