Literature:

Born in Pécs in 1902, Marcel Breuer was one of six apprentices who attended the newly founded carpentry workshop at the Bauhaus Weimar in 1920. The training programme followed a dual structure: At the beginning, Johannes Itten - from the summer semester of 1922 Walter Gropius - was the artistic director at the Bauhaus, while the practical carpentry trade was learnt in a Weimar company. In 1922, Marcel Breuer was given the opportunity to furnish the entrance area of a house designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. In the hallway of the Sommerfeld house, he presented an ensemble of armchairs and side tables made of cherry wood and leather. The way the furniture was made is worth mentioning: Breuer did not join the chair legs, backrests and seats together as was previously customary, but instead inserted the individual elements into one another. The first design for the slatted chair dates from the same year. Breuer produced various versions of the characteristic and unmistakable armchair. The versions differed not only in the choice of wood, but also in the construction. While he used square legs in the early version, dated 1922, he used only wooden slats of the same cross-section in the second version presented here. He also reinforced the backrest with another wooden slat. Breuer dispensed with upholstery; the pieces of fabric stretched between the slats came from the Bauhaus weaving mill. As the majority of the objects from the joinery workshop were commissioned works, the slatted chair never made it into industrial production. It is not known how many handcrafted examples were produced. Exhib. cat., Bauhaus-Möbel, Eine Legende wird besichtigt, Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, Berlin 2002; cat., catalogue Bauhaus Archive - Museum for Design, Architecture, Design, Painting, Graphics, Art Education, ed. by the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin 1987; Straßer, 50 Bauhaus Ikonen, die man kennen sollte, Munich 2019; Wilk, Marcel Breuer, Furniture and Interiors, New York 1981.