Josef Hoffmann - Design Vienna and the Wiener Werkstätte New York Thursday, March 3, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Alfred and Mileva Roller, Vienna

  • Literature

    Peter Noever ed., Josef Hoffmann Designs, exh. cat., MAK, Vienna, 1992, p. 62, fig. 72 for a similar example; Christian Witt-Dörring, Josef Hoffmann: Interiors 1902–1913, New York, 2006, p. 39 for the apartment, p. 195 for a similar example

  • Catalogue Essay


    The square, the grid, the framed plane restrict space but when repeated suggest endless recurrence and limitless space. Josef Hoffmann’s canny use of concentric squares in the decoration for Mileva and Alfred Roller’s drawing room (above) rebuffs the viewer but conversely draws him forward. Regardless the effect, the impression is one of depth. In his subtle furniture designs for the same apartment, ca. 1906, Hoffmann hews to the same hard line in service to stability but never at the expense of movement: the thick stiles and rails of the present cabinet amplify the recess of its panels; the painted border pushes forward; the setback of the base recedes. “For a moment, one imagines oneself in a transitional stage between permanence and transience,” wrote curator Christian Witt-Dörring of another Hoffmann interior.
    Painter, costume designer and set decorator, Alfred Roller no doubt understood the dramatic effects of animated space. He taught with Hoffmann at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vienna. Prior to that, both men were founding members of the Vienna Secession, an association of artists intent on overthrowing the static art forms of the past.

   

4

Important cupboard, from the Roller apartment, Vienna

ca. 1906
Painted pine, pine, sheet metal.
75 1/4 x 47 1/4 x 19 3/8 in. (191.1 x 120 x 49.2 cm.)
Executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, Austria.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Design Vienna and the Wiener Werkstätte

3 March 2011
New York