Cabinet

Josef Hoffmann was born in Pirnitz (Brtnice) in Moravia. In 1892 he began his study of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the class of Carl Freiherr (Baron) von Hasenauer, which Otto Wagner took over in 1894. Three years later he received the Prix de Rome for his graduation dissertation and set off on study trips to Italy together with Joseph Maria Olbrich. Josef Hoffmann made a vital contribution to the artistic awakening that occurred in Vienna around the turn of the 19th to 20th century. In 1895 the circle of friends around Hoffmann – including Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Max Kurzweil – joined up to form the ‘Siebener Club’ (Club of Seven), an avantgarde forum for the testing and discussing of new ideas. In 1897 Hoffmann was one of the founding members of the ‘Vienna Secession’, the Association of Visual Artists of Austria. Aged 29, he took over a teaching position at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. Up until his retirement with ‘emeritus’ status in 1936, he taught at the departments of architecture, metal-working, enamel working and arts and crafts. In 1903 Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte jointly with Koloman Moser and Fritz Waerndorfer. In the context of his realised idea of the total work of art, Hoffmann produced designs for all branches of applied art. Throughout his whole career as an artist he worked both as an architect and a designer. His work encompasses numerous apartment furnishings and building projects such as the Sanatorium Purkersdorf near Vienna or the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, whose interiors were completely furnished by the Wiener Werkstätte. Hoffmann attained a high degree of international recognition as much with his designs for furniture, glasses, vases and jewellery as with his exhibition designs. He is world-famous primarily for his austere, clear, geometrical designs.
Hoffmann exerted lasting influence over the development of applied art. Josef Hoffmann died in Vienna in 1956. The chest of drawers shown here comes from the flat of Dr. Hermann and Lyda Wittgenstein. Fully in line with the concept of hygienic modernity, the piece of furniture is kept in blue and white.1
cf. Rainald Franz in: Exhibition catalogue ‘Josef Hoffmann. Hans Ofner’,
Galerie bei der Albertina  Zetter , Vienna 2022, p. 14