Josef Hoffmann, architect and designer: an exhibition at the MAK, Vienna

The 2019 annual exhibition in the #josefhoffmann Museum in Brtnice, a joint exhibition of the Moravian Gallery, Brno, and the MAK, #vienna, is dedicated to Josef Hoffmann’s (1870– 1956) association with Otto Prutscher (1880–1949). Like Hoffmann an architect and de- signer, Prutscher was master of all materials used in the applied arts. He was an exhibition designer, a teacher, and a member of the most important reform movements in art from the Secession to the Wiener Werkstätte and the Werkbund. On the occasion of the 70th anni- versary of Otto Prutscher’s death this year, the exhibition highlights the importance of his work for the development of Viennese Modernism. 

Starting in the 1980s—together with the protagonists of the “Vienna Style” around 1900— Otto Prutscher started to gain wider recognition. Similar to #josefhoffmann, the first com- prehensive studies of whose works appeared in Italy after the Second World War, in Otto Prutscher’s case it was the Italian architectural journal Metamorfosi that, in 1994, issued his “Unpublished works from archives in Como and Vienna”. 

Ten years younger than #josefhoffmann and Adolf Loos, Otto Prutscher belonged to the first generation of #vienna Arts and Crafts School students to benefit from the curricular reforms directed by Felician von Mayrbach and from the teaching of young professors such as #josefhoffmann and Koloman Moser. Prutscher mastered a range of materials in his father’s cabinetmaking workshop, as well as as in bricklaying and carpentry apprentice- ships, completed in the summer vacations. 

After his acceptance at the the #vienna Arts and Crafts School in 1897, Prutscher took a course with Willibald Schulmeister in ornamental drawing, and later for two semesters a specialist class in architecture with #josefhoffmann. The training he received from the se- cessionist architect Hoffmann and the premodern painter Matsch was to leave its mark on Prutscher’s designs and completed works—in terms of both the graphic quality of his designs and his orientation towards current trends in architecture. From 1907 Prutscher be- gan to work for the Wiener Werkstätte, and from 1909 he taught, like Hoffmann, at the Arts and Crafts School. 

Hoffmann worked with Prutscher for decades on projects such as the #vienna Kunstschau of 1908 and the Cologne Werkbund exhibition of 1914, sharing with him an unbounded crea- tive drive. Today Prutscher’s recorded oeuvre includes over 50 buildings (villas, apartment houses, and portals), nearly 50 exhibitions organized and designed alone or with others, some 170 installations, over 300 designs for installations, and over 200 suites and individ- ual pieces of furniture. 

Prutscher’s designs were implemented by more than 200 enterprises, principally the Wie- ner Werkstätte but also important manufactories such as Backhausen, Klinkosch, Augarten, Meyr’s Neffe, Schappel and Melzer & Neuhardt, and the Deutsche Werkstätten in Dresden. In addition he was artistic advisor to Thonet, Loetz Witwe, and Wienerberger. 

Twenty years after the first monograph on and exhibition of his work (Otto Prutscher. 1880–1949. Architektur, Interieur, #design [Otto Perutscher, 1880–1949: Architecture, Interior, Design], University of Applied Arts #vienna, 1997), the exhibition JOSEF HOFF- MANN – OTTO PRUTSCHER discusses Prutscher’s complex achievement against the back- ground of Hoffmann’s oeuvre. Both spatially and thematically, it is a continuation of the permanent exhibition JOSEF HOFFMANN: Inspirations, that since 2009 has been tracing the roots Hoffmann’s artistic inspiration in his birthplace Brtnice. Starting on 20 November 2019, the MAK will be presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition: OTTO PRUTSCHER. Allgestalter der Wiener Moderne [Otto Prutscher: Universal Designer of Viennese Moder- nism]. 

Josef Hoffmann Museum, Brtnice 

In 1907 #josefhoffmann renovated the Baroque house where he was born in Brtnice accord- ing to the principles of the Wiener Werkstätte. As early as 1992, the MAK presented the exhibition Der barocke Hoffmann [The Baroque Hoffmann] in Brtnice. Since 2006, the house has been jointly run by the MAK and the Moravian Gallery in Brno as the #josefhoffmann Museum. Within the framework of this cooperation, a new exhibition is present- ed each year. 

#josefhoffmann Museum, Brtnice*
náměstí Svobody 263, 588 32 Brtnice, CZ
*A joint exhibition of the Moravian Gallery, Brno, and the MAK, Vienna
1 July – 27 October 2019
July–August: daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
September–October: Tue–Sun 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
To arrange visits outside these times, please telephone Last admission 4 p.m. 

www.mak.at