Architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer was an influential Hungarian-born modernist of Jewish descent. Called one of the "fathers" of Modernism, he showed great interest in modular construction and simple forms. In the 1920s, Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus, stressing the combination of art and technology. He eventually became the head of the school's cabinet-making shop. Breuer also practiced in Berlin, where he designed houses and commercial spaces, along with a number of tubular metal pieces of furniture, of which replicas are still being produced today. Due to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s, Marcel Breuer relocated to London, and later ended up in the United States, where he taught at Harvard's architecture school. He returned to Europe in 1953 to return to larger projects after years of only residential commissions. Breuer adopted concrete as his primary medium, and became known as a leading practitioners of Brutalism, emphasizing curvy, soft, sculptural architecture.
Breuer designed the Wassily Chair (also known as the Model B3 Chair) in 1925-26 while he was working at the Bauhaus in Germany. The Wassily Chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, despite popular belief; Breuer's design was inspired in part by the curved tubular steel handlebars on his Adler bicycle. Kandinsky, who was also on the Bauhaus faculty, had admired the completed design, and Breuer made an additional copy for Kandinsky's personal quarters. Breuer's Wassily Chair was revolutionary in its use of materials and manufacturing.
