Marcel Breuer’s Furniture: Within and Beyond the Bauhaus - A lecture by Christoph Janik and Ágnes Anna Sebestyén
Marking the 100th anniversary of the Wassily Chair, art historian Christoph Janik and curator Ágnes Anna Sebestyén explore Marcel Breuer’s lesser-known furniture designs and remarkable legacy. The lecture also offers a chance to discover recent additions to the MÉM MDK’s Marcel Breuer collection in person at the Walter Rózsi Villa.
Schedule
The now world-famous Wassily Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer, was first presented to the public 100 years ago. Created at the Bauhaus and initially marketed under the name B3, this tubular steel chair was a sensation in its time.
However, Breuer designed many other remarkable pieces of furniture both before and after this turning point in design history. German art historian Christoph Janik and Ágnes Anna Sebestyén, curator at MÉM MDK, will each present three pieces of furniture from Breuer’s oeuvre.
The lecture will also explore Breuer’s lesser-known furniture designs and the newest additions to the MÉM MDK’s Marcel Breuer collection. Participants will have the opportunity to see these pieces in person at the Walter Rózsi Villa, as part of the exhibition Breuer, Goldfinger and Other Hungarians: Brutalist Architecture at Home and Abroad.
About the speakers
Christoph Janik is a German art historian who studied in Eichstätt and at Humboldt University of Berlin. He currently works in Berlin as an architectural researcher at the Wiese & Janik heritage conservation office. As a member of the Bröhan Design Foundation in Berlin, he edited the volume Stahlrohrrevolution! Kálmán Lengyel, Marcel Breuer, Anton Lorenz und das Neue Möbel (Stuttgart, 2023), which explores the history of early tubular steel furniture.
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén is an art historian who studied in Budapest and Leiden. She works as a museum curator and researcher at MÉM MDK and coordinated the creation of the institution’s Marcel Breuer collection. Her book on the collection, A csőszéktől a brutalizmusig: Breuer Marcell-gyűjtemény Budapesten (From Tubular Chairs to Brutalism: The Marcel Breuer Collection in Budapest), was published in June this year.
Walter Rózsi-villa
The home of Hungarian architecture.
The former home of Rózsi Walter and her family, a residence built according to the designs of József Fischer and Eszter Pécsi, is a unique architectural monument of Budapest and at the same time is the only Modern villa that can be visited by the public in Hungary.
From May 18, 2022, the Walter Rózsi villa awaits its visitors as the first permanent exhibition space of the Hungarian Architecture Museum and Monument Protection Documentation Center.
