Josef Hoffmann

In copyright1870-1956·Austrian·design·Wikipedia ↗

Who

Architect and designer, born on 15 December 1870 in Brtnice (Pirnitz), Moravia, trained under Otto Wagner at the Vienna Academy, and a co-founder of the Vienna Secession in 1897 and, with Koloman Moser and Fritz Waerndorfer, of the Wiener Werkstatte in 1903. He taught at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, built the Purkersdorf Sanatorium and the Stoclet Palace in Brussels, and died in Vienna on 7 May 1956.

Why they matter

He made the square into a style. Strict geometry - grids, squares, the cube - runs through his buildings, chairs and cutlery, and through the Wiener Werkstatte he insisted that a house and everything in it, down to the door handles, be designed as one work. The MAK calls his aim progress through beauty: better design as social progress.

What to buy

Originals: Hoffmann's furniture, silver and glass are a real collector market, but most of it is auction and dealer material. The way in is bentwood. His Sitzmaschine, designed for Purkersdorf around 1905, was then mass-produced by Jacob & Josef Kohn in bent beech, so Kohn bentwood is the factory-made side of his work; ask for the Kohn attribution and model number, and treat anything called "Hoffmann style" as not his. Wiener Werkstatte silver and the big pieces are the top tier and belong with specialist auctions. The honest new option is the Kubus armchair of 1910, revived in the 1960s and still made by Wittmann in Austria: a licensed product, not a period original, and sold as such. Prints are not the point with Hoffmann. Books: Josef Hoffmann 1870-1956: Progress Through Beauty (MAK Vienna and Birkhauser, 2021), 448 pages, edited by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Christian Witt-Dorring, Rainald Franz and Matthias Boeckl, the guide to the whole oeuvre made for the MAK's retrospective.

Notes

The MAK in Vienna gave him the most comprehensive retrospective to date in 2021-22, with more than 1,000 exhibits. MoMA and the Leopold Museum hold the Sitzmaschine. He lived through five political regimes, from the Habsburg monarchy to the Second Republic, and was president of the Secession from 1948 to 1950. He is in copyright until the end of 2026, so free image archives are not linked here yet.

Story

Adolphe Stoclet was a Belgian financier who met Hoffmann in Vienna while overseeing railway construction, and found they shared a taste for the avant-garde. He and his wife Suzanne commissioned a house in Brussels, and gave Hoffmann and the brand-new Wiener Werkstatte their first complete residence. Presented in 1905 and finished in three stages by 1911, it was designed down to the door handles and light fittings. Gustav Klimt designed the mosaic frieze in the dining room, executed by Leopold Forstner.

The surprise is what happened next: nothing. The Stoclet Palace stayed in the family and stayed shut. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009, yet it remains privately owned and closed to visitors, more than a century after it was finished: Hoffmann's masterpiece, with a Klimt in the dining room, is a house the public cannot enter. In 2024 the Brussels Parliament approved a motion ordering the house to open for at most fifteen days a year; when that will happen is still uncertain.

Key works

Purkersdorf Sanatorium (1904-05) - Purkersdorf, near Vienna
Sitzmaschine, adjustable armchair model 670 (c. 1905) - MoMA; Leopold Museum, Vienna
Stoclet Palace (1905-1911) - Brussels
Kubus armchair (1910) - still made by Wittmann

Josef Hoffmann

Who

Why they matter

What to buy

Notes

Story

Key works

In museum collections

See the work

Prints

Books

Originals

See also