In 20 different sections, it explores Hoffmann’s enormous body of work, encompassing all aspects of daily life. The show also includes several previously unknown works, thus filling important gaps in research. Hans Salzer’s apartment, circa 1902 a set of silver flatware manufactured by the Wiener Werkstätte for Fritz and Lili Waerndorfer and the daybed, upholstered in an exquisite plant-motif fabric, from the Boudoir for a Big Star that he designed for the Paris International Exhibition in 1937. His brilliance is encapsulated in more than 1,000 objects, such as a table he created for the living room of Dr. Hoffmann did not accept any distinction between high and low art. Bringing beauty to the lives of his clients was for him synonymous with aesthetic and social progress. The most comprehensive retrospective to date of his impressive oeuvre, the MAK’s “Progress Through Beauty” exhibition honors the architect, designer (of iconic furniture, lighting, decorative objects and fashion), teacher and exhibition maker, who was one of the key figures in Viennese design from the late 1890s on. On this occasion, a reporter for the Times expressed considerably greater enthusiasm about Hoffmann, writing, “Yesterday afternoon the crowds in front of this room had to be held back.” From being a sensation to being forgotten - and back again: Nearly a century on, Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) is reevaluating Hoffmann’s importance. The virtuosity of his play with glass, mirrors and chromed metals on the floor, walls and ceiling was such that visitors could see themselves in 10 different reflections. The Times merely recorded that he was “a pioneer in modern architecture and design” and a “founder and leader for thirty years of the Wiener Werkstaette, a famous artcraft center.” No mention was made of his significance for American modernism, to which this once-influential Viennese had made a formative contribution, whether through his straightforward design for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 or his legendary powder room at the International Exposition of Art in Industry held at Macy’s department store in New York in May 1928. ![]() At the end of Hoffmann’s life, his reputation had almost entirely faded. ![]() The paper might not have printed an obituary of Hoffmann, one of the 20th century’s greatest design talents, at all had the newsroom not been contacted by a former student and assistant of his, Leopold Kleiner. May 15, 2022At the end of May 1956, a short notice of the death in Vienna of Josef Hoffmann at the age of 85 appeared in the New York Times. Top: Running through June 19, a major retrospective at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) titled “Progress Through Beauty” presents more than a thousand of his creations. Pictured here in 1954, Josef Hoffmann was a leading figure of the Viennese Secession movement and a prolific designer whose output spanned from architecture and furniture design to tableware and jewelry
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