MARCEL BREUER. DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE
Objects and projects between Europe and America |
Marcel Breuer. Design And Architecture is the extensive retrospective devoted to the works of the hungarian architect Marcel Breuer. The exhibition is produced by the Vitra Design Museum and is edited by Mathias Remmele. The Vitra Design Museum will present Marcel Breuer. Design And Architecture in different europeans museums, but this is the only italian appointment in the Cultural Center Candiani of Mestre.
Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) "invented" tubular steel furniture, a quite revolutionary development and considered his core contribution to the history of design, but the exhibit shows all the aspects of the multiform Breuer's activity. His immense architectural production is structured by subjects, presenting - through twelve models of buildings - the different fields of artist's action.
The show exhibits all the furniture objects created by Breuer and some models of buildings specially produced for the exposition and ordered by subject (Houses - Spaces - Volumes) and also completed by sketches, drawings, and photographs.
In the Volumes section is explained the extraordinary ability in the treatment of large structural volumes. In fact, Breuer is a creator of buildings caracterized by a monumental quality of the mass, buildings known by their structures, for example: Atlanta Central Public Library (Georgia, USA / 1977-80)),Whitney Museum of American Art of New York (New York, USA / 1964-66),Begrisch Hallway (New York, USA / 1959-61), De Bijenkorf Department Store (Rotterdam, Holland / 1953-1957).
The Houses section reflects a contemporary critics to the one-family houses, perhaps the most important contribution in architecture realized by Breuer because he wanted to distinguish clearly the space built from the natural one, and characterizing its residences with an informal sound.
The Space section shows how Breuer - particularly in the churches, in which he can to pursue his creative ideals - used various structural solutions to freely cover great spaces: for example in St. John's to Collegeville (Minnesota, USA / 1958-61), St. Mary (Bismarck, North Dakota, USA / 1961-63) and Mutterhaus Sonnhalde (Baldegg, Lamp, Switzerland /1968-72).
In the Motifs section are presented the central elements of Breuer's design vocabulary. For example the motif of protrusion is already to be found in his early furniture designs, and was subsequently re-interpreted in repeatedly new ways in many of his buildings in the decades that followed.
The same applies to the horizontal bands and reclining rectangles - striking design elements that give many of his furniture items, interiors, and buildings their characteristic appearance.
Breuer's manifest interest in textures can likewise be read as a bridge between design and architecture, whereas the almost Cubist sense to the crystalline formal idiom so characteristic of many of his concrete buildings did not emerge until the 1950s.
Since that time, it can be considered the trademark of his personal approach to this material, so central to 20th century architecture.
The closing of the exposition this to charge of Material, section where is documented cronologically the Breuer's research in material for its designs, with the utilization, at first, of wood, and than the tubolar steel, the aluminum, and finally the plywood.
Among the most interesting aspects of the exposition is owed indicated without doubt the innovative accomplishment in aluminum - material, before Breuer, totally stranger in the production of furniture - that supports the construction of the principle to jerk of the tube of steel.
Like designer and architect, Marcel Breuer can be considered one of the most important figures of the 20th century. He studied in the Bauhaus, where he worked, between 1925 and 1928. In this period he also produced numerous pieces of furniture in tubolar steel, including the leggendary Wassily. In 1937 Breuer emigrated to the United States. In the beginning of the fifties, Breuer carried out various projects large-scale projects, among others creating various buildings that were at the forefront of international debates, such as the Unesco Headquarters in Paris (1952-8; together with Pierluigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss) or the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1964-6).
Breuer's furniture and his interior design has contributed to put the bases in a new and modern culture of the design. But the reputation of this autor continues beyond the years twenty, and today is considered one of the most important designer and architects of the twentieth century and this retrospective is a good opportunity to appropriately know all the different fields in which he was active.
Between the collaterals events to the exposition of the Candiani Cultural Center we indicate besides the following appointment:
What connection between the contemporary architecture and the other expressions of art?
Arch. Francesco Cocco
November 16th h. 5,00 pm - Conference Hall 4th floor
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum
Arch. Francesco Dal Co
December 1st, h. 5,00 pm - Conference Hall 4th floor
Marcel Breuer. Design and Architecture
Mestre, Centro Culturale Candiani
October 23th 2004 / January 30th 2005
www.comune.venezia.it/candiani
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edited by:
Maria Angeles
Fernandez Alvarez
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in cooperation with:
Umberto Rovelli
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