Marcel Breuer was 20 when he started at the Bauhaus. The year was 1922, and the world was bursting with an ardent desire for change and liberty. It didn’t take much more for the visionary artist to bring design into a radical new modernity in 1925. Breuer borrowed free will from the aspirations of his time and used it to combine aesthetic pleasure and sensuality in materials and gestures to make a technical discovery. Within a logic for mobility and speed, and to make beauty accessible to the masses, the young Hungarian designer perceived the illumination for his creation within the handlebars of his bike. Inspired by its steel frame, he would use similar tubes to construct his chair.
The material was very accessible and economical. Perfect to satisfy the ambitions of the era. But Breuer’s genius would lead him to rediscover a new aesthetic: uniting metal for the structure and fabric for comfort, he mixed steel with black cow leather. And voilà! The masterpiece was complete in all its sleek, minimalist glory. The legend comes to its end when Wassily Kandinsky, friend and colleague of the designer, fell in love with the prototype and asked him to create a second just for him. The icon was born: it would be named “the Wassily”.
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