UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHERInterior of Josef Hoffmann in Villa Knip...

Hammer

€100

UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER
Interior of Josef Hoffmann in Villa Knips, Vienna 19
silver gelatin deduction/paper, 49.5 x 37.5 cm
verso dated 1924 1925, inscribed Villa Sonja Knips, Wien XIX, Nusswaldweg 22 Anrichte, stamped ATELIER OB. BAUR. PROF. ARCH. DR. h.c. JOSEF HOFFMANN
provenance: Carla Hoffmann, private collection Vienna

ESTIMATE °€ 200 - 400
STARTING PRICE °€ 100

Josef Hoffmann, a student of Carl Hasenauer and Otto Wagner and a founding member of the Vienna Secession, was one of the central figures of Viennese modernism as an architect and designer. Josef Hoffmann created residential buildings for Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, Eduard Ast, Otto Primavesi and Robert Primavesi, among others. Sonja Knips, portrayed by Gustav Klimt as early as 1898, was, together with her husband Anton, an early patron of Hoffmann and associated with Viennese Modernism. In 1903, Sonja Knips had her Vienna apartment refurnished by Hoffmann and commissioned a country house in Carinthia from him. In 1919 he designed the tomb for the son of the Knips family who died in the war, and finally in 1925 he built the Villa Knips in Vienna-Döbling. In 1903 Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte (WW) with Koloman Moser and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, 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, and a contractor for the Wittgenstein family, remained one of the WW's most important designers until its bankruptcy in 1932. The Wiener Werkstätte aimed to unite the entire spheres of human life through design, in the sense of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Among the WW staff were about a dozen women who were crucial to the stylistic shift from Art Nouveau to Art Deco in the 1920s, such as Vally Wieselthier, Gudrun Baudisch, Reni Schaschl, Hilda Jesser, and Susi Singer. Together with Stefan Rath, the head of the glass manufacturer Lobmeyr, Josef Hoffmann founded the Österreichischer Werkbund (ÖWB) in 1912. During this time, Hoffmann designed numerous glasses and chandeliers for Lobmeyr, some of which are still produced by Lobmeyr today. 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). Hoffmann's gravestone was designed by Fritz Wotruba.

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 °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographys 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.