Marcell Breuer is a world-renowned architect, a major figure in 20th century modern architecture, often referred to as an architect of American or sometimes German origin.
Holott Breuer was born and raised in Pécs, Hungary, on 21 May 1902. He was under 20 when he left his hometown to begin his studies at the Bauhaus. He made a name for himself as a furniture designer in the first decades of the century, and after emigrating to the United States in 1937, he became known as an architect. But he remained connected to his hometown until his death.
The exhibition highlights these dualities: the stylistic traits of the furniture designer and Brutalist architect, and the relationship between the cosmopolitan and Hungary. It also attempts to fill the gap, to show that Marcel Breuer, a world-famous architect, maintained his ties with Hungary and his hometown until his death, keeping in touch with his personal friends and with the city that asked him to design a museum. Unfortunately, this could not take place due to his illness.
The exhibition includes models, drawings and photographic documents of Breuer’s most famous buildings, as well as artifacts, documents and furniture on loan from the archives of the Museum of Decorative Arts, the Janus Pannonius Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Breuer Archives at Syracuse University, and private collections.
Iconic pieces of furniture such as the Vasily chair and the 1954 granite desk from Breuer’s New York office, a key piece from the Museum of Applied Arts’ furniture collection, are also on display.
The special feature of the material, which covers the most important stages of his life and the chronology of his works, is that it also presents surviving documents of family history, using contemporary press material, and recalls some memorable moments of correspondence with Breuer’s colleague Máté Major over a period of more than thirty years.
His family correspondence, held by the Janus Pannonius Museum, also gives an insight into his family, private and professional life.
The exhibition also traces the intellectual legacy that the master’s work left in the works of Pécs architects and architecture students, and in the image of Pécs.