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JOSEF HOFFMANN* (Brtnice 1870 - 1956 Vienna)

Design for a flacon
pencil/paper 29,7 x 21,1 cm
monogrammed JH

SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE °€ 200 - 400
STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE °€ 200

Josef Hoffmann, a student of Otto Wagner, was one of the central figures of Viennese Modernism as an architect and designer. In 1903, together with Koloman Moser and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, he founded the Wiener Werkstätte (WW), modeled on the British Arts and Crafts Movement and under the influence of Viennese Art Nouveau. Hoffmann, a friend of Gustav Klimt and Anton Hanak, among others, remained one of the WW's most important designers until its bankruptcy in 1932. The Wiener Werkstätte, also referred to as Wiener Werkstatt, Vienna Workshop, Wiener Werkstaetten or Wiener Werkstätten, aimed to unite the entire spheres of human life in design, in the sense of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Its customers were mainly artists and the upwardly mobile Jewish upper and middle classes. Josef Hoffmann's acquaintance with Berta Zuckerkandl led to the first major commission: the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, planned by Viktor Zuckerkandl, Berta's brother-in-law, west of Vienna. Among the WW staff were about a dozen women who were crucial to the change in style from Art Nouveau to Art Déco in the 1920s, e.g. Vally Wieselthier, Gudrun Baudisch, Reni Schaschl, Hilda Jesser and Susi Singer. Josef Hoffmann survived the Nazi period unscathed despite hostility from the Nazi architectural ideologist Paul Schmitthenner. He was commissioned by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts to further develop the Vienna Arts and Crafts Association (a Nazi successor organization to the Austrian Werkbund) as its artistic director. To this end, an "artistic experimental institute" was founded in 1941, where young artisans could further their education under Hoffmann's guidance. After the war, in 1948, Hoffmann founded the Österreichische Werkstätten as the successor to the Wiener Werkstätte und Werkbund (ÖWB), of which he had been a member until 1920. Hoffmann's gravestone was designed by Fritz Wotruba. Further artists and styles: Viennese Modernism, Art Nouveau, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, Adolf Loos, Michael Powolny, Dagobert Peche, Oswald Haerdtl, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Carl Otto Czeschka, Vally Wieselthier, Johann Georg Platzer, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Friedrich von Amerling, Otto Wagner, Eduard Ameseder, Carl O'Lynch of Town, Richard Gerstl, Max Domenig, Robin Christian Andersen, Egon Schiele, Paul Kassecker, Hans Knesl, Heinz Leinfellner, Rudolf Hausner, Joannis Avramidis, Maximilian Melcher, Alfred Hrdlicka, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Arik Brauer, Dorit Margreiter, Herbert Boeckl, Josef Dobrowsky, Albert Paris Gütersloh
PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.